Page 55

Kaos lifted his gaze, eyeing the coming split in the road. No signs, no markings. Just a jagged path through the trees that looked as wrong as it felt. He glanced at Jaxi, still flush but shaken. Still his angel.

He touched the curve of her jaw with his thumb. Just to remind her of what they shared. What could never be unmade.

A static like current brushed across his skin from the front. He watched Kollaborator as the pressure in the cabin shifted and something unseen passed between them like a wave.

Kollaborator flipped Jaxi’s card, his jaw ticking.

“What is it?” Kaos asked.

He looked up and around. “We’re not headingtoa place,” he said. “We’re headingintoone.”

Kaos exhaled slowly through his nose as Jaxi's pulse climbed under his own skin. He set his hand on her thigh, grounding his power in her. He stared out the window, watching the trees begin to blur. Lines skewed, colors deepened. The air moved in ways it shouldn’t.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Kollaborator warned quietly.

The meaning of his words registered in his generational lingo and Kaos gripped the hilt of his power. It felt like a trap morphing into a battlefield with every warped second that passed.

“What are the cards doing now?” Kade asked from the far side, voice tight.

“They’re definitely doing something,” Krave muttered, looking around, both hands gripping the wheel.

Kollaborator flipped through them. “They seem to be syncing, but not to each other, not that I recognize.”

Kaos leaned forward. “Then what are they syncing to?”

“I don't know,” he said. “They’re cycling, shuffling roles, like.... some cosmic slot machine.”

Krave lifted both hands off the steering wheel suddenly. “Okay.” He looked at Kollaborator. “Something else is driving now.”

Outside the window, the world distorted again. A row of trees repeated twice—exactly the same, like copy-pasted brushstrokes.

“Cananybodytell what the hell is happening?” Kollaborator wondered, gaze moving between the cards and the windows.

“The world seems to be repeating itself,” Krave said.

“Yes, I see that much,” Kollaborator murmured.

“That card is glowing,” Kross said, pointing over the seat.

Kollaborator looked. “That's your card,” he said to Krave.

“Mine? What’s it saying?”

Kollaborator stared, brows pulling hard. He shook his head barely. “It says the wind must open what was sealed without force.”

A landscape unfolded outside the vehicle, bleeding across the terrain like a projection forcing itself onto reality.

Krave faced him in the seat. “And what the hell does it mean?”

“It means you’re first.”

“First for what?”

The vehicle vanished.

“Holy shit,” Kollaborator breathed, looking around with the rest of them. They stood in a space of nothing, feet on smooth stone ground with a sky that spun wrong. In the distance, a narrow stone corridor stood, flanked by two towering humanoid statues without faces.

Kaos sealed his wings over Jaxi and strapped his arms over her chest, every layer of his powers loading.