Note: For the sake of narrative clarity and fluency, the following passage is told from Rafe’s first-person perspective.

  I was born into a mining family. Both my parents worked underground—though back then, I was far too young to understand what that meant. To me, the “mine” was just a giant sandbox where people dug for magical seashells. I can’t recall their exact job titles. What I do remember is that they both wore helmets with headlamps and brought home little rocks to teach me about geology.

  All of that was before I turned ten. I don’t remember exactly what happened that day—I only remember eating way too much cheap, bucket-sized chocolate ice cream that night. The kind loaded with artificial flavoring—so fake even Otto could’ve eaten it. We were camping out in the backyard. My sister was upstairs on the phone with her girl friends.

  That was when my dad burst into the yard and threw Otto and me into the basement. I don’t know how long we stayed down there. Eventually, people in diving suits opened the door and tossed my sister and me into a building that looked more like a prison than a house.

  Two months later, my sister and I were placed with a foster family—and we changed families every year. From the start, I could tell this wasn’t the kind of “foster care” I’d heard about. But I didn’t truly grasp how different it was until I was sixteen—this time, it was my sister’s turn to be the center of everything.

  It was our last foster home. Just one woman—forty-six years old, used to have a daughter. She was especially fond of my sister, gave her the old bedroom, the old clothes... all of it used to belong to her daughter. I should’ve realized something was wrong much earlier.

  If I’d learned about Hunters earlier—understood what they were capable of in Nowhere—I would’ve…

  Anyway. My sister started trusting that woman more and more. They’d do “girl stuff” together.

  Three months passed like that. On her birthday, we had a fight—I told her she looked like a sulky pig that day. I felt bad afterward and wanted to make it up to her, so I bought the headphones she’d been wanting.

  She was seventeen, starting to gain weight. I shouldn’t have said that—about her or anyone. But we were really going at it... At dinner, she mentioned how all her friends had one, and she wanted one too…

  Sorry. It’s in the past. I’m fine.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  Anyway, I was just a stupid , stupid teenager. I dragged my feet the whole way home because I didn’t know how to talk to my sister without starting another fight. By the time I got back, everything was already over.

  Listen—if I’m calling it “everything,” it means I’m not giving you the details.

  Don’t ask!

  The last time I saw my sister, I slammed the table and called her a fat pig. She threw a plate at me and screamed for me to get out.

  I know that moment matters. But… the thing is, the soul inside her body wasn’t hers anymore. It was that woman’s daughter.

  My sister was dead.

  Every foster home I stayed in belonged to Hunters from the Ainsworth clade. It was supposed to be the clade looking after their own. But what happened to us…

  The investigators called it a complete accident. Said nothing like it had ever happened before.

  That woman found an old Collection—something that had supposedly lost its power decades ago. She saw a method in it. If my sister hadn’t been so perfectly compatible, she wouldn’t have even tried.

  Two Hunters became my legal guardians—the kind that only show up on paperwork. My family left me a large sum of money, enough to send me to the best boarding schools, finish college, and maybe even scrape through a modest life after that.

  I spent my eighteenth birthday with a puppy and a bottle of liquor—got way too drunk. No one ever taught me how to pace myself.

  That was also the first time I opened a Path. I still don’t know if that was luck or just plain bad timing, but the place I fell into Nowhere from… was the house where I last saw my sister. She was still there, only no longer anyone I recognized.

  The gin bottle I was holding brought me back.

  After I opened the Path, the Ainsworth clade reached out. Gave me some options. I got assigned a guide. That let me meet more Hunters, and faster than most do.

  But I never liked that place, I’d rather deal with Hunters than be one myself. So I chose to become a middleman—finding the right people for the Ainsworth clade when they needed someone to do jobs their own wouldn’t touch.

  And now I’ve met you. You know what happened after that.

  So yeah—you need to understand—I’m technically a Hunter from the Ainsworth clade. Half of one, anyway. The ring you returned to me—that was my dad’s tenth-anniversary gift to my mom.

  A more expensive wedding band, forged from a Collection called Eternity, born from Lamia. It’s the last thing she ever left me.

  Just believe me when I say—this isn’t just a business going bad. It’s personal.