"So what exactly just happened?" Kevin asked, staring out into the distance.

Shadow hopped down from the wilting leaves as they swiftly dissolved back into vaporous Mana. "I don't know. Felix just ripped open the sky?"

“People can do that?”

"Well, Ondine did it, right?"

"Yeah, but she sliced someone with it. Like an attack.” Kevin flexed his hands. He felt that almost-soreness from using a ton of Skills quickly. “And did you hear what he said? This is like some sort of passage."

Shadow shrugged. “At least we got away from those smoke monsters. My arrows were being wasted.”

“My thorns.”

“Yeah yeah.”

Belatedly, Kevin realized he was hunched over and he straightened his spine, only to fight against the urge to huddle closer to his brother. Something about the place was unnerving, and it wasn’t the monsters that had been chasing them. He and his brother had been running from monsters since they’d arrived on the Continent. Enormous smoke monsters were new, but they weren’t all that different from the massive snakes that used to hunt them in the jungles. He felt like that now. Hunted.

“Does it feel like something's watching us?"

Shadow scratched his jaw. The smoky blue-black bow was new, an evolution of a Skill he’d had for a long time. It was gone now, dispelled to wherever it rested when not in use. Without it, his brother was less intimidating, more like Devon than Shadowlord.

"Yeah. It’s…weird. Like someone is standing behind me."

They both turned, casting their Perception outward across the deck and empty air alike. A sourceless sunlight surrounded them, diffuse and pale like midday in winter. Shadows were thin, barely there really, as if the light were coming from every direction at once. Thick, off-white clouds sped past them, and the silvery-blue sky was hazy with overcast.

Other than the Legionnaires slowly trickling out of the hold, there was nothing around them.

"Maybe it's from one of those islands down there.” Kevin pointed to one of the many rocky islands that floated in the distance. How far was difficult to judge—everything seemed fuzzy in that insufferable light.

“Yeah,” Shadow said, rubbing his palms against his sides. “Maybe.”

The Manaship plied the sky, leaving new trails of clouds in its wake. Slowly, the nearest islands shifted past them like ponderous whales while others whizzed by like passing cars. Kevin squinted. Islands he’d thought were huge turned out to be no bigger than their old apartment, which had been woefully small for two boys and their parents. Others were ponderously huge, literal mountains lifted up into the sky and covered in forests.

The longer they watched, the less Kevin could believe anything was watching them from the islands. There was nothing around them. “What even is this place?”

“Felix called it a shortcut? Something about skin…?”

Kevin made a face. “Gross. I thought this was just to get away from the smoke monsters? A shortcut where?”

“To Amaranth,” Beef said, stepping closer. He was still covered in thick crystalline armor, though it peeled away from his face as he spoke. “We’ve used these a bunch. They’re called Dark Passages. Felix is having us skirt all the weird Dustbringers this way.”

“Dustbringer. That’s an eerie name for ‘em. Fits though. They way they just…dissolved things.” Shadow shivered. “How’s he know they won’t just be waiting for us when we get out?”

Beef shrugged. “No clue. But this place isn’t anything like the messed up landscape out in the Territory. The anomalies can’t follow us here, and we can outpace them fast.”

“How do you mean?”

“Time’s different in liminal spaces. It’s been what, twenty minutes since we entered? I bet it’s been like less than one back on the Continent.”

"Really?"

Beef nodded, his smile big. "Yeah. One time we spent a couple hours traveling and it ended up taking way less.”

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“How much less?” Kevin asked.

“Uh, a…lot?” Beef cleared his throat. “It works the same as the Shadowgates. You remember those? I told you about them back in the jungle.”

“The portals right?”

“Right. Dark Passages are like the gates, they’re just—you know,” Beef gestured, twirling his hand around. “Worse.”

"Worse how?"

"They're untethered.” Hallow’s blackened green eyes blinked open across Beef's breastplate, four of them, and Kevin couldn't help but flinch back. "My apologies. I did not mean to startle you."

"I'm not startled,” Kevin lied. “I’m just not used to seeing armor that blinks.”

“Mhm.”

“Anyway, what’s untethered mean?”

“The Shadowgates are tethered to the artifacts the Nym invented, bound between two identical objects. The two gates forge a pathway between them. They use the same concept as the Dark Passages, but elevate it, thereby making it safer and faster. By tethering the passage to both artifacts and binding it to the primary traveler’s Mind Skill, it creates a protection against…intrusions." Hallow’s eyes narrowed. “Something I regret is not available here and now.”

"Oh," Shadow said slowly. "I think I understand that, mostly.”

“Good!” Beef smiled wide, obviously relieved. “So, long story short: this is a secret back alley between the big streets, and it’s not safe even a little bit.”

Kevin’s hackles stood up. “Not safe?”

“Nope! So keep your weapons close." Beef patted Kevin on the back, but the Kobold was slender as well as short. He nearly fell to his knees on the deck. “Oh jeez! Sorry!”

"It's fine.” Kevin said through a grimace. “Barely felt it.”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry, uh... I'm gonna, I gotta go talk to my dad.”

The giant Minotaur left, Hallow clinging as tightly as ever.

Shadow watched after them, and only when Beef had strode past the mainmast did he glance at his brother. “You okay?"

"Ugh, yeah. Hurt like hell though.” Kevin rotated his shoulder. He was gonna get a bruise on his back, he just knew it. He sighed. “All of them are so much stronger than us."

"What are you talking about? We're extremely powerful. You see those arrows I shot? Blasted that anomaly thing apart.”

“And then it came right back together."

"So? Not even the great Felix

could do anything about that. He had to open up a hole and run away. We're not weaker than them.” Shadow jabbed a finger at his brother. “We're Unbound too."

Kevin grunted. “Kobolds are awesome, but I just wish they’d been a bit…taller.”

"Taller? Psh,” Shadow waved away Kevin’s words. “Look at Archie. We're barely taller than him and he's a badass. Did you hear what he did? When we were all tied up? He broke through the Hierophant’s barrier. He got that lady with the Dragon there, too."

"Don't remind me."

"About the Dragon?"

"No, you idiot: about that place. The one we're headed back to.” Kevin had a hard time thinking about it, let alone saying its name. He tested it out. “Amaranth.”

It tasted like sweat and bile and the leather stench of a muzzle. Kevin gritted his teeth, fighting to keep his last meal down. He, his brother, and the Princess Ondine had all been captured by the Hierophant and held for nearly a week—to Kevin, it had been one of the longest weeks of his young life.

He massaged his wrists, smoothing out the fur that covered just over the scales of his hand. He still recalled the redcloaks and their tools, all of them asking the same question over and over.

“What is the Fiend planning?”

Kevin had never answered, but not out of loyalty. He simply didn’t know. The redcloaks never once took his words at face value, and they tried just about everything. Eventually, however, they’d given up. That was when they were strapped to some pillars, chained up and muzzled, exposed to the elements and the blistering glare of the Divine.

“Hey.”

Kevin blinked and Shadow punched him in the shoulder. “Owww!”

“She’s dead. The Hierophant won’t ever bother us again.”

“I know.” Kevin rubbed his eye. Some dust had gotten in it from those smoke monsters. “Going back there just doesn’t feel right. And I’m scared, Devon. It feels like things are about to go terribly wrong.”

His brother put an arm around him and squeezed. There were no words between them. Life was hard, but it could get better so long as they survived.

Shadow clapped him once on the back and shoved Kevin away. "Come on. Let's go get some more of that soup Evie had. I think I saw a pot of it cooking downstairs."

Across the dark, in the back of nothing where light itself went to die, there was a noise.

It wasn’t a loud sound. It wasn’t piercing or shrill. All things told, it was a beautiful song, fragmentary or not. It spoke of power, achingly familiar and vividly alien, the details were smeared across unbroken scales.

When it rippled across the dark, something took notice.

There was movement among the textureless black as a thousand mouths tasted the air. A thousand tongues twisted between innumerable teeth, and the vast bulk of something unnamable made its presence known.

Flocks of creatures rose up around it, each of them tainted by a vivid, bloody crimson and dozens of liquid, purple eyes.

A vivid Need thundered across the dark, spreading among them alongside the snippet of song. It told them of a forgotten purpose, long since abandoned to mindless hunger. It spoke of a dream.

Of Reunion.