Page 5

I inch along the tower’s edge, one hand trailing against the surface. It’s unnaturally smooth until I reach one spot. There’s a tiny shift in the texture. I trace over it again, making sure I’m not imagining it.

I’m not. There’s a shallow groove, like a seam.

“Please,” I whisper, not even sure who I’m talking to. My voice sounds wrong to my ears. “Please let me in.”

I place my palm flat against it. Nothing happens. I’m not sure what I expected. A door to open? Someone to greet me. I rest my forehead against it, eyes burning with defeat. I can’t even cry. I have no tears left.

I’m going to die here.

I let out a shuddering breath, and then …

Ice shoots through my arm. I gasp, the sound catching halfwayto a scream. It’s not pain exactly, but a sensation so intense that my whole body stiffens in response.

A faint line of light blooms beneath my hand—pale blue, humming just under the surface. It follows the shape I just traced. An outline deepens, a doorway, it glows brighter, and the surface begins to shimmer.

Light spills into the sand. The door doesn’t swing open. Itvanishes.One moment it’s solid. The next, there is only blackness. And I fall forward, the wall beneath my palm no longer there to support my weight.

Cold air rushes out, dry and stale. It smells of stone, and metal, and something else. Old paper, dust, or forgotten time.

My heart hammers against my ribs. Goosebumps rise along my arms. The hair at the back of my neck lifts. I hesitate on my hands and knees at the threshold. Everything inside me screams not to move forward. But behind me only the desert and death waits.

I can’t stay out here.

“You asked for this,” I whisper, and I crawl forward.

The instant I’m inside, the world shifts again. The pressure drops, like an elevator moving too fast. My stomach twists, and the opening behind me vanishes. It doesn’t just close. Itdisappears.

I spin around. The wall is seamless again. There are no marks, no handle, no proof it was ever there. Panic claws its way up my throat.

“No! No, no, no. This can’t be happening.” I launch to my feet and slam both hands against the wall. “Let me out! Please, let me out.”

I scream until my voice shreds. Hit the wall until my hands ache.But it doesn’t give. My voice ricochets through the dark, off walls I can’t see, twisting into an echo that doesn’t even sound like me.

I’m trapped.

Darkness presses in, thick and heavy. It wraps around my skin, closes over my eyes. My breathing comes fast and shallow. My heart pounds like it’s trying to escape my chest.

Then everywhere lights up …

Blue, cold, bleeding from the walls. It spreads across the surface like frost on glass, crawling outward in thin, fragile lines. The room I’m in reveals itself. There are no windows, and no furniture. Just an endless wall wrapping around me to make a room that’s maybe seventy feet across.

In the center, a spiral staircase rises, twisting upward into darkness, around a column made from stone. There’s no handrail, and no sense of where it might lead.

I stare at it, willing something else to appear. A window. A trapdoor.Anything.

“Hello?”

No one answers. The tower remains still and silent, except for an odd quiet hum that seems to come from the light.

This isn’t normal. It can’t be. No one walks along a street and ends up in a desert, and then a tower.

Maybe I really am dead. Could this be the afterlife? But if I’m dead, why does everything hurt so much?

My gaze returns to the staircase. I have two options. Stay here, or go up and see where it leads.

The blue light pulses, one slow throb, and the temperature drops sharply. Cold air brushes the back of my neck.

I shiver.