Gavriel was murdering the same goddamn skeleton for the fourth time and the skeleton was acting like it had a lifetime membership to the “fuck you, I get back up” club. Either the fucker was deaf, pure stubborn, or running on some ancient fuck-up warranty that covered unlimited reassembly.

“Shit!”

He fought like a beast to reach her, muscles straining, magic flaring, but they kept reforming.

The corridor was a fucking factory and the factory’s product was “things between Gavriel and Serena” and the production rate was exceeding his ability to destroy.

The runes overhead flared violently. Sections of stone lit in pulsing slabs of light, and suddenly they weren’t looking at carvings anymore.

They were looking at echoes of the dead. Moments of dying replaying themselves in the walls like projections burned into reality.

Wolves screaming. Vampires pouring over them like locusts. Bodies ripping open, then reforming, only to be torn apart again. Shadows dragging wolves into the stone as if the wall itself were hungry. The dying was on loop. Eternal.

A ten-thousand-year screensaver of slaughter that the corridor had been playing to an empty audience until now.

“WHAT THE FLYING SHIT IS THIS PLACE!”

The corridor did not answer. The corridor was busy being the worst room Gavriel had ever entered, and he had been in Bellatrix’s parlor.

The echoes didn’t stay contained to the walls. Of course they didn’t.

Hands reached out of the scenes, tangible, clawing at his clothes, his hair, his skin, trying to drag Gavriel into a death already lived. He had been popular his entire life. This was the first time the popularity was going to kill him.

Rook: This is a memory trap. The corridor is replaying every death it recorded.

Gavriel: How the fuck do you know that?

Rook: I am very smart, Gavriel. Do NOT let them pull you in.

Gavriel: Oh thank the gods you said something. I was just about to walk into the ghost murder replay and introduce myself.

Rook: You are welcome. I accept apologies in the form of steak

Gavriel: We are in a death corridor and you are negotiating compensation.

Rook: A wolf has priorities. Mate first. Steak second. Both are non-negotiable.

The world lurched. The lurching was the corridor’s way of saying ’you thought this was bad, watch this.’ He was yanked sideways and hurled through a portal depositing him into an identical corridor that mindfucked him in every way possible except he had company in this one.

A literal slaughter was occurring around him. Vampires were tearing into wolves, shifted and human. Fangs ripped throats open. Claws split ribcages. Men screamed as they were ripped apart, only for their bodies to knit back together, just enough to be killed again.

Gavriel had seen a lot of shit in his life. He had seen a coma, a past life, and a giant mural of Dexmon in the last week alone. This shit took the cake and set it on fire. This was the echo nightmare from hell and he was inside it.

A ten thousand years of recorded massacre playing on repeat and he had just been thrown into the projection like a man shoved through a movie screen into the film.

“No,” Gavriel snarled.

The fighting stopped. Every vampire turned to look at him in the nightmare as if they could hear him.

Whoops.

A vampire lunged, grabbing his leg with clawed fingers. Blood spilled hot down his calf.

Real.

The pain was real. The blood was real.

The echo responded. Every vampire in the memory lunged towards him simultaneously, their recorded hunger redirecting to the one thing in this corridor that was fresh, alive, and bleeding.

Rook: We are bleeding.

Gavriel: I know we are bleeding.

Rook: Bleeding attracts vampires.

Gavriel: NO SHIT.

Rook: Stop bleeding.

Gavriel: Oh, wonderful idea. Let me turn off the blood. Where’s the goddamn faucet, Rook?

“FRESH BLOOD! DON’T LET HIM LEAVE!” one vampire roared.

Gold magic detonated from his hands, instinct taking over. He blasted the vampires back in a violent wave, bodies disintegrating into ash and shadow. They screamed as they burned, but more poured in, relentless.

Magic hit multiple at once, obliterating them.

The blast was satisfying in a way that nothing else today had been. The vampires screamed and stayed the fuck down. For the first time in this entire damn corridor, something Gavriel did produced a result that lasted longer than four seconds.

Rook: You did the thing.

Gavriel: I DID THE THING.

Rook: Do it again.

Gavriel: I DON’T KNOW HOW I DID IT THE FIRST TIME.

Rook: Your hands are still glowing. Just aim them at things. This is not complicated.

Gavriel aimed his palms again at a vampire running straight towards him. Nothing happened. Naturally.

Gavriel: Aiming. Why is nothing coming out.

Rook: Find the gold inside you. Gold. Your magic is GOLD.

Gavriel: That is the most unhelpful thing possible.

Rook: It is because she is—

Gavriel: If you say MATE right now I will lose my MIND and I need my MIND because my MIND is the only thing keeping me ALIVE in a DEATH ECHO full of VAMPIRES!

Rook: I was going to say your form is sloppy.

Gavriel: You were not.

Rook: Okay, fine. MATE.

He shook his hands, as if that might help the magic reload. It did not.

Rook: We run. Stop trying. This is embarrassing.

Gavriel shifted into his wolf, who ran at full speed.

He dove back through the portal he was pulled into, landing in the hall and more arms pulled him. Rook ripped them apart and ran at Alpha speed, tearing down the stone passage in a blur of black, driven by bond and fury.

A skeleton wolf reformed in front of him.

Gavriel: The wolf skeletons weren’t that bad. Little guys. Doing their best.

His wolf growled at it before shifting back into human form.

Thirty feet down the corridor, Serena was hyperventilating.

Her panic was at an all-time high. Every inhale was too shallow, every exhale too fast, her lungs running a cycle that was producing oxygen at an insufficient rate.

Dark tendrils coiled around her ankles and yanked her back towards an opening. These ones were thicker and darker than before.

Aurelia: More magic. Boom.

Serena: I am trying. We are too low.

Her gold magical reserves were completely depleted. Her insides burned when she called for it. She switched for pink, which was running dangerously low.

When it came, it was weaker than usual.

The tendril didn’t even flinch or recoil.

In fact, nothing happened. The tendril absorbed the pink the way a lake absorbs a raindrop, the magic dissolving into the dark surface without resistance, without impact, without a single goddamn indication that it had been noticed.

She let go of the stone and let herself be dragged again. This was the third goddamn time. No magic. New plan. She tore an arrow from her quiver and plunged it into the tendril.

An eerie, piercing scream ripped through the corridor. The sound was inhuman, ancient, the frequency of something that had existed in stone for millennia.

The tendril recoiled violently and released her.

She scrambled away on her hands and knees. Gavriel mindlinked, voice in full command.

Gavriel: Serena, I’m trying to get to you. Run towards the skeleton wolves. Now. Move.

He didn’t soften it. There was no warmth in the delivery. No ’you’re okay’ or ’I’ve got you.’ The warmth was a luxury that required proximity. What she needed was direct command.

Dexmon: Serena, can you make a portal to the underground library. Fin is down there and can help you.

Serena: I-

Before she could finish, more tendrils came.

Gavriel watched her stab it with an arrow, still too far away. Twenty feet of skeleton wolves and grasping hands and ancient bullshit between him and the woman who was out of steam. He knew Serena. If she could make a portal, she would. She was out of magic.

“SHIFT!”

The command came out of Gavriel’s mouth, his wolf pushing through and taking control. The word was Alpha. The frequency was Alpha. The vocal cords that produced it belonged to a Gamma and the Gamma’s wolf had just issued an order that should have been physically impossible for his rank.

White light detonated where Serena had been trying to run, her body dissolving into brilliance so bright it bleached the corridor walls and sent the tendrils recoiling from the light the way the vampires had recoiled from flame.