The sun had long dipped below the horizon when they descended to the lower parts of the city. The silence had become a familiar thing. But the part the woman led them to was almost empty. They stopped near what looked like an abandoned stall. With no light to see, David had to sense the people within.

  The woman knocked on the door in a practiced pattern. The door shimmered, marks of runes lit up the edges, and then spilled out on the wooden walls. A footstep on the other side became audible, and then the door opened.

  “Come,” the woman said, pushing past the man on the other side. David hesitated, but Zoey brushed past him. The man waited for David to cross the threshold before shutting the door.

  The interior was empty and surprisingly spacious. David had to focus deeply to notice that there were others in the room.

  “Kalon,” The woman called. Someone sighed behind David and stood up from a small, low-backed wooden chair that had not been there moments ago.

  “You are late, Nima,” The man croaked. He glanced at David and Zoey. Like the woman, Nima, their faces were covered. But the men had no cloaks on. Torches hanging from the walls illuminated them.

  “I am here now, Kalon, open it.”

  The man grunted, his hands twitching. None of them had any visible weapons, but neither did Nima before she pulled the dagger. David watched the exchange, wondering if they were allies or enemies.

  The man gestured for them to step back, then knelt on the wooden floor. He placed both hands on the floor, and David noticed the swell of essence around him. His arms shimmered, lines like cracks tearing through his skin. Within the cracks, David saw the flow of essence pour through Kalon, gathering around his fingers, and then it spread through the floor.

  Kalon groaned as more and more essence poured through him. David tried to trace the pattern of the flow, but it was too complex and ever-moving.

  “Riden,” Nima called over Kalon’s grunts. The whole room lit up, the essence roared within Kalon, pushing like a wrathful wave. Whatever pattern David saw in it before had been swallowed in the chaos.

  “Riden, help him!” Nima called, and the first man walked over to where Kalon knelt. He hesitated, then took off his mask. David flinched at the sight of the man’s face.

  It looked like I’d been gnawed through by rats. His teeth were visible through his left jaw. Runes like Carlos’s were burnt into whatever piece of skin remained.

  They glowed a fierce green, lighting up the grotesque wound. He leaned down and placed his hand on Kalon’s shoulder, and began to mutter something David couldn’t hear.

  The essence gushing through Kalon flared as if reacting to Riden’s presence. The scarred man pulled it into him. His skin shone through his tattered leather armor. The veins in his neck and head lit up.

  David took a step back.

  “Don’t worry,” Nima said. She sounded calmer than she had been when she attacked him. “This is necessary.”

  “For what? They are burning themselves alive,” Zoey said.

  “To open the gate takes a lot of essence,” Nima explained. She pointed to the walls where essence had begun to shape into forms like rune marks. They filled the walls with lines and lines of scripts. Some were written in tiny, strange symbols, while others were images drawn into complex patterns. David walked closer to the wall behind him, scanning the patterns for any clue of what he was looking at. The runes twisted and changed the longer he stared at them. Almost as if it was undoing his mind.

  “Vith,” David called. “What is this?”

  “You can’t read it, Lord Ruler,” Nima warned, not bothering to turn to him. Kalon yelled as the essence storm raging through him intensified. David glanced at the pair, gleaning a surface understanding of what they were trying to accomplish.

  “Kalon is the funnel and Riden can store essence,” David whispered. “But why do you need something this elaborate for the gateway?”

  Slowly, the symbols and images started to link to one another. Webs of essence stretched from one pattern to the next until they were standing in a glowing room of magic.

  “Kalon,” Nima called. “Pull in the final rune from Malaki.”

  “I know,” Kalon groaned. He stretched out his left hand, and a small blade formed in it. It was no larger than the dagger Nima used against David, but this was different. The hilt was white as scraped bone. It was carved into the head of a snake, with red stones where its eyes should be. The blade itself was black, darker at the sharp edge.

  Kalon dragged the blade across his right palm, and a line of blood welled up. Then more bubbled up and slid down the palm to the floor. The blood sizzled and smoked when it touched the wood.

  “Brace yourself,” Nima called just before a blast of hot air shot from Kalon and Riden. The air in the room turned dry, and a pulse of a different power thrummed through the room. As though the room itself had come alive.

  “Ready?” Riden asked, turning his head to look at them. Nima nodded. David was too stunned by what was happening to respond. But he saw the final rune take shape on the floor. He hadn’t even noticed Kalon’s blood burning the mark into the wood, but once it was done, it glowed a deadly red.

  “Ready, Kalon,” Riden said.

  And the room slowly transformed. The walls peeled away, opening to the void of darkness. The sky was strange. It had a texture, layers of colors blending into each other.

  And the wind was warm on David’s skin.

  “All this to open a gate?” Zoey asked as the final parts of the wall vanished. David caught the look of fear on Zoey’s face before the ground vanished from under them. She staggered back, shocked to be standing on nothing. When she caught herself, the magic had calmed to a loud silence.

  Here, in this void that seemed at once a part of Tarthen and at the same time not, David gained another understanding of the spell.

  “You are masking it,” David said. Nima wheeled around to face him. In her eyes, David saw that he was right. Kalon stumbled up. He seemed drained. The tear on his skin was healing even though David sensed no essence from him.

  Riden put his mask on again and stepped away from Kalon.

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  “You are right,” Kalon said, sighing. His breathing was slow and methodical. A breathing technique, David noted.

  You should ask him for that, Ignis mocked.

  David ignored the dragon. Instead, he looked at the sky again, noticing how the clouds moved in the wrong direction.

  “If we don’t mask the gate,” Nima began. “The High Guard of Orphus will trace the gate back to Lord Huz.”

  “Orphus?” David asked. “The city of gods?”

  Nima chuckled. “No god lives in Orphus. None of that matters anymore.” She turned back to Kalon, who seemed to have regained his strength already.

  Kalon reached out into the space in front of him. His hand vanished at the wrist, and when he pulled back, a doorway opened.

  Kalon stepped in first, then Riden followed. Nima stopped at the door, her cloak unmoving even though David could feel a slight push of wind on his face.

  “You should listen to what he has to say,” She said. “We have been here for a long time. And we didn’t mean your people any harm.”

  “You almost killed Carlos,” Zoey said, scowling at her. Nima shook her head.

  “That was his runes, not us.” She turned to David. “The city is affecting her. It affected your other friends, too. Lord Huz can undo it when you see him.”

  David nodded, following behind her. Zoey stopped him just before he stepped through the doorway. She looked uncomfortable, restless. But her eyes were cold.

  “What?” David whispered. He looked up at the void spell, “I don’t think this will hold on for long.”

  “Don’t trust them, David,” Zoey said. Her voice was hard. David wondered if this was really about Gis. They had never seemed close. But Gis was part of their group, so perhaps he shouldn’t question her intentions.

  “I know, Zoey,” David said. “I don’t trust them. But we need them.”

  “Why?”

  “We were sent here by the Eternal for a reason,” David said. He lowered his voice, hoping he could assure her, calm her down. She pulled away subtly, as if recoiling from him. It was unnerving.

  “Just be careful,” Zoey added. “They can’t be what they seem to be.”

  David nodded, spared a moment to see if there was something in her he could trace to the city. Nothing stood out. She seemed normal to him. And yet, he could see it in her eyes. The wrongness was almost physical.

  He stepped through the doorway and came out to find a squad waiting for him.

  You have crossed a modified gate!

  You have stepped into a forged domain!

  This forged domain is tethered to the 1010th ranker!

  Due to this domain’s instability, your mantle [Lord Ruler of the Tower of Amareth] has been restrained.

  The suppression weighed on him one after the other. They felt like spiritual manacles squeezing his soul. The sensation lasted for a few moments, and it was gone.

  The squad closed around them almost instantly. Their movements were sharp, coordinated, like a hunting pack. David’s instincts stirred, but the suppression pressed down on his senses, smothering his perception of the people around him.

  He could feel them only faintly, though. Through the domain’s restraints, he knew. They were not ordinary fighters.

  He counted twenty. Enough to give him trouble if he needed to kill this Lord Huz he was to meet. He pushed the thought away. There was no need for violence.

  Nima strode ahead without pause, her cloak brushing the strange ground as if she were unbothered by the distortion that made David’s steps feel like walking on shifting glass. “Keep close,” she said. Her voice carried none of the warmth it had moments ago. “This is a stolen domain. It was reshaped to fit our use. But it is near its end. Soon it will fall apart.”

  David frowned but kept his questions to himself. He could see the horizon folding in on itself, jagged ridges of color and shapes collapsing like paper burning at the edges. The domain was unraveling, but held together by force of will and essence.

  The squad marched in silence, their masked faces turned forward. Not one of them looked at David or Zoey. Yet the pressure of their presence pressed against his skin like invisible blades. He glanced sideways at Zoey. She walked stiffly, eyes darting from one masked figure to the next, her jaw clenched. Dal flickered into form suddenly, perched above her shoulder, its gaze unreadable.

  At last, the shifting ground sloped downward, leading to a platform of black stone jutting out. Around it were many tents and makeshift homes.

  And standing upon it was the man who had summoned David.

  David slowed. The figure was unmasked. His face, at first glance, was humanoid—high cheekbones, eyes deep-set and dark. But instead of a beard, appendages hung from his chin and jaw, fine and sinuous like tendrils, each twitching faintly as though tasting the air. His skin bore the paleness of sea-stone.

  Four arms jutted from his sides. One hand gripped a long scepter topped with a shard of glass that pulsed faintly with light. Another held an open book, its pages moving as if written on by unseen hands. The lower right hand he lifted, extending it outward in greeting.

  David hesitated before clasping it. The skin was rough, calloused, but the grip was firm.

  “Welcome, Lord Ruler,” Huz said. His voice was a deep resonance, carrying both authority and weariness. “At last, we meet.”

  David released his hand, but Huz’s attention had already shifted.

  The fourth arm, idle until now, waved affectionately at Nima. His lips curled into something resembling a smile as his eyes fixed on Zoey.

  “You’ve gotten worse, haven’t you? Tarthen seems to have tainted you,” Huz said, his tone softer now, almost indulgent. “Your eyes are sharper. I wonder, what thoughts plague your mind right now? Fatigue? Hate?”

  Zoey stiffened under his gaze. She didn’t reply. Dal bristled, but even the Vjognir seemed wary of Lord Huz. David felt the weight of silence settle. This was the 1010th ranker. He’d met rankers and lords before, but this man carried a strange kind of aura. It commanded order.

  “What do you want?” David asked.

  The ranker put the book away and turned fully to David.

  “I want to survive,” Lord Huz said. His fourth hand gestured for the others to leave, and soon it was just the three of them and Nima.

  “You look alright to me,” David said, even though he felt the weight of the domain’s suppression getting heavier. Lord Huz shook his head. The tendrils attached to his chin whipped about, writhing.

  “You know, before I ended up in Orphus, I walked the towers. Not Balek’s, of course. Not many have managed to conquer a tower.”

  “Where is Gis?” Zoey spat, interrupting Huz’s monologue. David waited for the ranker to react, but the man only smiled.

  “Your friend is safe,” Huz said. “The point of my story is, you know what real survival feels like, don’t you? You know it is not this. Look at us hiding from the sickness of Tarthen and the cruelty of Orphus.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” David said. “And I don’t care, to be honest. I just want my friend.”

  “And I need your help,” The ranker said with a strange smile.

  “To go to Orphus?” David asked. “I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to help you.”

  “You are stronger than most of us, Lord Ruler. You have the authority I do not carry anymore. And what we really need is the power of your sibling.”

  “What?”

  “The shadow knight,” Huz explained.

  “Elisha?” David asked.

  “No!” Zoey yelled. “You can’t have him!”

  Lord Huz sighed. He took a step toward Zoey, and David reacted, summoning his sword. The blade appeared, then disappeared almost immediately.

  The Lord of the domain has added an extra restriction!

  “Stop!” David cried, trying to move. His body froze in place. Nothing held him. He sensed no external power pushing against him. The space around him seemed to lock him down, as if he were sealed in a narrow prison.

  Lord Huz reached Zoey. His eyes pored over her, ignoring David’s pleading. The Vjognir vanished, as if banished by the ranker’s power.

  Zoey fought against his hold, but she was too weak. She couldn’t move. Not even to pull away from the touch of his scepter. David watched as his sister’s eyes bulged and then stretched up to the tip of her toes. Her body shook violently, her mouth split in soundless wail.

  Then she fell back into Nima, who had suddenly appeared to catch her.

  “She will be fine,” Lord Huz said. His voice was shaky. The tendrils were slower now, and the hand holding the book let it fall. “She will be fine,” the ranker whispered, breathless.