From the shadows at the far end of the corridor, wolf skeletons embedded in the walls began to twitch.

The twitching started small. A jaw rattling against stone. A claw scraping inside its mounting. The sounds were wrong, wet-sounding despite being bone, producing an audio that belonged to living muscle and was coming from things that had been dead for millennia.

One skull rotated. Then another. Then five.

Stone cracked as ancient bones tore themselves free. Joints bent the wrong way. Spines twisted backward. Jaws hung open at impossible angles, hinged wider than any living wolf’s jaw had ever opened, the gaping producing a silence that was worse than a growl because growling meant alive and this was something else entirely.

Wolf shapes, once sacred, now perverted into something silent, predatory, and utterly wrong, stepped forward on skeletal limbs.

Their hollow eye sockets fixed on him.

And they began to stalk.

Rook: RUN.

Gavriel: Already ahead of you.

Gavriel ran at a speed down the corridor that only belongs to Alphas. His boots tore through ancient dust, his arms pumping, the tunnel blurring past him in streaks of blue-white rune light. Behind him, the skeletons moved without sound.

No footfalls. No clatter of bone on stone. Just the hiss of dead air being displaced by things that should have stayed in the walls and whose staying had been overruled by whatever defense system this corridor was running.

Fin: Serena, give us a status update.

Nothing.

Gavriel felt her panic surge again, sharp and electric, slamming into his chest. The matebond was a live wire. Her terror hit him so hard his stride stuttered, his lungs seizing for one half-second, his body processing her fear as his own before his brain could sort the signals apart. His wolf snarled, claws raking at the inside of his skin.

Rook: FASTER. She is close. I smell her.

Gavriel: I smell her too. Everywhere. This place is weaponizing her scent.

Rook: The real scent is forward. The dead wolves behind us are gaining.

Then arms burst from the walls and seized him.

Grey, skeletal, grasping. They hooked his armor, his shoulders, his wrists, the hands erupting from cracks in the stone with the coordinated timing of a trap that had been waiting for exactly this body at exactly this speed. They dragged him forward through the chaos.

Gavriel made a noise he would later insist was a battle cry.

Instinct flared and he blasted them back with magic, forcing space. The magic was gold. His magic was gold.

“Get back you fucks!” he yelled.

The realization registered. He was magical too. It was contagious apparently.

Rook: That is why I glowed. Use your magic.

Gavriel: How the fuck do I do that?

Gold flash up ahead and his eyes locked on Serena.

She was hauling herself out of what looked like a portal, caught halfway between worlds. One knee braced against stone, one arm still swallowed by darkness. Her eyes were molten gold, her wolf pushing to the surface, Aurelia fighting from the inside with the desperate, clawing fury of an animal whose human was being dragged somewhere the animal couldn’t follow.

“SERENA!”

He sprinted. Full speed. The skeletons were behind him and the arms were in the walls and the portal was pulling her and the pulling was winning.

She let go of the stone she was holding onto, flipped on her back as it dragged her through, and the last thing Gavriel saw was her shooting flame at whatever had taken her.

A static-sounding mindlink came through.

Fin: Does anyone copy?

But before Gavriel could respond, more arms burst from the walls and seized him just as more skeleton wolves rounded the corner. The corridor was a gauntlet now, dead wolves in front, dead hands on every side, and Serena’s scent somewhere ahead, pulling him forward through the worst goddamn hallway ever constructed by anyone in the history of architecture.

A skeleton wolf lunged. Gavriel’s fist connected with its skull and the skull shattered into powder.

“FUCK off!”

Another lunged from the left. He spun, caught it by the spine, and ripped it in half.

“FUCK off TWICE!”

Two more came at him simultaneously. He grabbed one by its jaw and used it as a club to destroy the other, both exploding into bone fragments that scattered across the corridor like shrapnel.

“FUCK off in STEREO!”

An arm shot from the wall and snagged his ankle. He stomped it at the wrist. The hand kept crawling. He stomped again.

“STAY down, you handsy piece of shit!”

Dexmon: Serena, where are you? Can anyone hear me?

Gavriel: I can hear you. I’m trying to get to her. She was pulled through a portal.

Fin: Aeron. If you can hear this, make a portal. Now.

A skeleton wolf dropped from the ceiling. Gavriel caught it midair and slammed it into the ground so hard the stone cratered.

“CEILING wolves now! CEILING WOLVES! Who DESIGNED this!”

Dexmon: Gavriel, what the hell is happening down there?

Gavriel: I am fighting dead wolves and the corridor is alive and I am having the WORST day! Also my magic is gold now! We can discuss that NEVER!

Thirty feet down the corridor, Serena was hauling herself out of what looked like a portal, caught halfway between worlds once again.

Second time is the charm. She kicked something on the other side and tore herself free, scrambling.

Gavriel caught sight of her again.

“Serena!” he roared.

Then the walls moved.

Tendrils shot out of the stone and clamped around her ankle. She fell and slammed hard onto the ground as a dark tendril dragged her back toward another portal.

She grasped the stone floor, tried to anchor herself. But her hand slipped.

Gold light detonated around her in a violent burst.

Then she screamed, high-pitched, and both hands flew to her ears as if she could hear something that Gavriel couldn’t and it was tearing her apart.

Even with the necklace on, across the corridor, Dexmon’s hands shot up to his head, feeling her pain in his chest and skull. Gavriel had an identical reaction. Her agony hit like a detonation, ripping through the dampening, bypassing the necklace, slamming into both of them with a force that buckled Gavriel’s knees and made Dex stagger against the sealed stone above.