The portal spat them out onto sand.

  Gale stumbled forward, caught himself on one knee, and felt the world settle wrong around him. The air tasted of salt and autumn chill, and somewhere distant, waves crashed against rock with a rhythm that didn’t match the urgency still hammering in his chest.

  Behind him, Daimon collapsed.

  Not dramatically. Just—stopped. One moment upright, the next crumpled onto the beach like a puppet with cut strings. His breathing came shallow and fast, his red hair plastered to his forehead with sweat despite the cool air.

  Gale was at his side in seconds. “Daimon—”

  The boy’s eyes were open but unfocused, pupils blown wide, staring at nothing. His skin had that wrong translucent quality again, like looking at him through water, and the edges of his outline seemed to waver when Gale tried to focus on them.

  “I’m here,” Daimon whispered. His voice sounded layered, like two people speaking fractionally out of sync. “I’m... the portal closed. We’re through.”

  “We’re through,” Gale confirmed, though relief felt premature. He pressed fingers to Daimon’s wrist—pulse too fast, thread-thin. “Just breathe. You’re safe.”

  “Safe.” Daimon’s laugh was bitter and broken. “Sure.”

  Gale looked around properly for the first time. White sand stretched in both directions, met by dark water that rolled in with methodical precision. Above them, the hillside rose in terraces of white stone and olive trees, and near the crest—

  His chest tightened.

  A temple. Not ruins, but inhabited. The columns were pristine, sturdy and elegant, and beside it stood what could only be the priestess quarters—a small palace of white stone that gleamed in the afternoon sun. Even from this distance, he could see figures in pale robes moving between buildings.

  “No,” he said softly.

  “What?” Daimon tried to sit up, failed, settled for turning his head. His eyes struggled to focus on the temple. “Where...?”

  “Look northwest.” Gale pointed across the water. “There. Do you see it?”

  It took Daimon a moment. Then his gaze caught on the distant spire rising from the sea—far, far away, barely visible through autumn haze. A lighthouse, its white stone unmistakable even at this distance.

  “Teryna,” Gale said flatly. “That’s Teryna’s lighthouse.”

  Daimon stared at it. Then at the temple. Then back at the lighthouse. His expression went from confusion to comprehension to something worse—devastation.

  “We’re on Calythe,” he breathed.

  “We’re on Calythe,” Gale confirmed.

  “But Velissa should be—southeast. I felt southeast.” Daimon’s hands curled into fists against the sand. “The seam was wrong. It was wrong, and I opened it anyway, and—”

  “Stop.” Gale caught his shoulder, firm but not rough. “You got us out. That’s what matters. We’re alive, we’re together, and we can try again once you’ve recovered.”

  “Recovered.” The word came out hollow. “Gale, I can’t—the portal shouldn’t have been wrong. I’ve never been wrong about direction before. Something’s—” He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers splayed over his sternum. “Something’s breaking.”

  Gale wanted to deny it. Wanted to say you’re fine, it’s just exhaustion, you’ll be fine. But Daimon’s edges were still flickering, and when the boy moved, the sound came a half-second too late, like the world couldn’t quite keep up with him.

  “Then we rest,” Gale said firmly. “No arguments. Sit. Breathe. Let your core settle before we do anything else.”

  “We don’t have time—”

  “We have exactly as much time as we make.” Gale shifted to sit properly beside him, close enough to grab if Daimon tried to stand.

  But the boy didn’t try. He twitched, fingers digging into the sand, eyes already dragging toward the horizon.

  “We must reach Velissa, now,” Daimon said. “I can open another portal—”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Everything about this is dangerous!” Daimon lurched to his feet and spun to face him. There was something wild in his eyes. “The lab’s dangerous. Being me is dangerous. But at least if I open a portal, we get there now. We don’t waste hours while 51—while whatever Kibas left behind—”

  “You nearly opened a portal to nowhere,” Gale said, keeping his voice level. “Your perception was wrong. Your seam was wrong. What happens if the next one drops us in the ocean? Or halfway into a wall?”

  “I’ll be more careful—”

  “You can’t be careful when your core is fracturing, Dai!”

  The words hung between them, sharp and true. Daimon’s face went pale, then flushed with anger.

  “Then what do you suggest?” His voice was tight. “Wait? Rest? Hope everything will be fine if we just take our time?”

  “Yes,” Gale said firmly. “That’s exactly what I suggest.”

  “Well I’m not waiting.” Daimon’s hands were shaking again. “I’m opening a portal to Velissa. You can come with me or stay here—your choice.”

  “Daimon—” Gale took a step forward, trying to reach the boy.

  “Don’t.” He stepped back, and the air pressure dropped slightly. Warning. “Don’t try to talk me out of this. I’m done being talked out of things. I’m done being protected and contained and kept safe while people I love suffer.”

  “She’s not suffering. She’s—” Gale caught himself, but too late.

  “Dead?” Daimon’s voice went hollow. “Is that what you were going to say? That 51 is dead and I’m chasing a corpse?”

  “I don’t know,” Gale admitted. “But I know throwing yourself into danger when you’re barely holding together won’t help anyone.”

  “It’ll help me.” Daimon’s outline flickered, just slightly. “Because at least I’ll know. At least I’ll have tried.”

  “And if you die trying? If you Drift in the middle of that lab and tear yourself apart?”

  “Then at least I die trying to save her instead of living as her coward!”

  The shout echoed across the beach. Daimon was breathing hard now, eyes too bright, and his edges were wavering.

  Gale stood slowly, hands visible, non-threatening. “You’re not a coward.”

  “I ran. She told me to run and I did, and I never went back. Never tried to find her. Never—” His voice cracked. “Six years, Gale. I had six years to go back, and I didn’t. Because I was too broken, too scared, too—”

  “You were trying to survive,” Gale said quietly. “That’s not cowardice. That’s human.”

  “Well maybe I don’t want to be human anymore.” Daimon’s hands curled into fists. “Maybe I just want to be Subject 54 long enough to open one more portal and find my sister.”

  Gale wanted to argue, to talk him out of this, maybe convince the boy to take a boat instead, but he couldn’t.

  Because he knew. He knew this wasn’t about gratitude or debt or even guilt. It was about family. The only family Daimon had ever known.

  Gale sighed slowly. If the roles were reversed, if he knew someone he loved was in danger, he would have ripped the sky apart to save them, and no one would have been able to talk him out of it.

  “Alright,” he said finally.

  Daimon blinked. “What?”

  “Alright. We’ll use the portal.” Gale kept his voice steady, certain. “Once you’re stable enough. Once the flickering stops and you can hold your outline solid. Then we go.”

  “You—you’re agreeing?”

  “I’m trusting you.” Gale closed the distance between them, met his eyes. “You know your limits better than I do. You know what you can survive. If you say you can open one more portal safely, I believe you.”

  “I didn’t say safely—”

  “Then we’ll make it as safe as possible. We’ll rest. We’ll wait until you’re steady. And then we go.” He gripped Daimon’s shoulder, firm and grounding. “Together. No matter what we find.”

  Daimon’s throat worked. For a moment he looked like he might argue, might push back against the unexpected agreement. Then something in him crumpled.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Don’t thank me yet.” Gale’s grip tightened slightly. “Because when we get there, you follow my lead. If I say we retreat, we retreat. If I say you’re losing cohesion, you listen. Deal?”

  A pause. Then: “Deal.”

  “Good.” Gale released him, stepped back. “Now sit. Rest. Let your core settle. We’re not going anywhere until you can stand without looking like a ghost.”

  Daimon nodded and sank down onto the sand. He pulled his knees up, wrapped his arms around them, and stared out at the water like it held answers.

  Gale let him. He scanned the beach instead, cataloging details. Empty, for now. The temple was far enough that they wouldn’t be immediately noticed, but Calythe’s priestesses were said to be perceptive. Sooner or later, someone would spot two men on a beach where men weren’t supposed to be.

  Behind them, a gull cried—then went abruptly silent.

  Gale’s head snapped up. The air pressure had dropped, just slightly. Just enough to feel wrong.

  “Daimon,” he said carefully.

  “I know.” The boy’s voice was tight. “It’s the Drift. It’s—closer.”

  “How much closer?”

  “I don’t know.” Daimon stared at his hands, watching them flicker between solid and translucent. “The portals… Master Ludmilla always said the more I use them, the harder the Drift is to contain. They don’t just cost energy. They pull me closer to the edge.”

  Gale looked at him. Edge. Like Daimon was balanced on a precipice, and every use of his power pushed him closer to falling.

  “One more reason to wait until you’re stable,” Gale said. “Until you can stand without flickering.”

  Daimon’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “Flickering. That’s one word for it.”

  “Would you prefer ‘destabilizing’?”

  “I’d prefer ‘fine,’ but we can’t all get what we want.” Daimon closed his eyes, tipped his head back against his knees.

  “May I ask you a question?” Gale asked after a while. “It’s about something that’s been bothering me since the warehouse.”

  “Ressan’s?” Daimon’s wariness returned.

  “Yes, and everything after that,” Gale nodded. “When you opened that portal to get us inside, then to move the crates, and those that brought us to Vartis, and Durnhal, and here…” His tone was curious, not accusatory. “You said you were always like this, but—how do your portals work, actually?”

  “You saw them work.”

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  “I saw them exist. That’s different.” Gale met his eyes. “I know standard portal theory. Studied it for years, even had a license once before I—well. Before I proved spectacularly that some people shouldn’t have access to certain magics.” He waved that away. “But what you do isn’t standard theory. Not even close.”

  Daimon was quiet for a long moment. “You really want to know?”

  “I’ve wanted to know since you cut through space like it was fabric,” Gale admitted. “But it seemed rude to ask while you were collapsing from the effort.”

  A ghost of a smile. “Fair.” Daimon turned to face him fully, then extended his arm, palm up. “So, imagine you want to travel from your wrist—” he touched his wrist with his other hand, “—to your elbow.” He touched his elbow. “The standard way, you’d check departure coordinates, arrival coordinates, calculate the distance, the mass, triple-check your math, start the spell, check again, then cast.”

  His finger traced a path along his forearm from wrist to elbow. “Physical matter starts dismantling the moment you step in. Atoms separate, travel through space until they reach your elbow, where they’re supposed to reassemble into you. If you were careful enough. If you were lucky enough.”

  “I once lost a good friend like this,” Gale remarked in a low voice. “She misplaced a comma in her arrival calculations.”

  Daimon looked at him for a moment, his expression grim. “It’s why portal magic requires so much training. So many licenses and clearances.” His finger stopped at his elbow. “One mistake in the calculations and you’re not just dead—you’re unmade.”

  Gale nodded slowly. “Which is why what you do makes no sense. You don’t calculate. You don’t dismantle. You just—cut through.”

  “Because I don’t use the standard method.” Daimon pulled his sleeve up slightly, exposing his wrist. “Standard portals, you’re traveling along the surface. Wrist to elbow, following the path.” He demonstrated again with his finger. “But I don’t travel along anything.”

  His other hand moved to his cuff. “I go through.”

  He pressed a fingertip to the fabric of his sleeve. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the air shimmered, and his finger simply pushed through, as if the cloth had become permeable. He kept pushing, and the fabric folded, bunched, gathered around his moving finger as it traveled under the sleeve toward his elbow.

  Then his fingertip emerged from another point on the fabric, near his elbow, as if it had punctured through from beneath.

  “I don’t dismantle and reassemble,” Daimon said, pulling his finger back and smoothing the fabric. The holes vanished as if they’d never existed. “I find where the fabric is thin—where reality doesn’t quite line up properly—and I cut through it. Make a door where there wasn’t one. Wrist connects directly to elbow without traveling the distance between.”

  Gale stared at him. “That’s...”

  “Impossible, according to every text I’ve read.” Daimon’s smile was bitter. “Trust me, I’ve looked. Master made me study standard portal theory for two years before she’d even discuss how mine work. Wanted me to understand what I wasn’t doing before I could properly explain what I was doing.”

  “You’re folding space itself,” Gale breathed. “Bridging two locations without the space between.”

  “Yes, more or less.” Daimon dropped his arm. “I feel where the seams are—where the fabric of reality is already weak or thin—and I just... cut through. Like opening a curtain to another room.”

  “No calculations.”

  “No need. I can feel the destination. Feel where it is relative to where I am, feel the weak points between them.” His hands moved restlessly. “It’s… instinctive. Like knowing where your hand is without looking at it.”

  “And the cost?” Gale asked carefully. “Because there’s always a cost.”

  Daimon’s expression shuttered. “Standard portals draw on your personal reserves. The energy you’ve built up through study and practice. Use a portal, rest, replenish, use another one. It’s exhausting but manageable.”

  “And yours?”

  “Draw on the Drift.” His voice went flat. “The same instability Master works so hard to contain. Every time I open a portal, I’m pulling from the thing that’s trying to tear me apart. Using the crack in the dam to channel water through.”

  He looked at his hands, watching them for signs of flickering. “Each portal widens the crack. Brings me closer to losing control. The one to Ressan’s warehouse—that was fine. Manageable. The second one to move the crates, keeping it open for several minutes—that strained me. Then four days later, three more portals in less than a day.”

  “Because you helped me.” Gale’s chest tightened. “But why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me you were that close to—”

  “To what? Breaking?” Daimon’s laugh was hollow. “I’m always close to breaking. That’s what I am. The question isn’t whether I’ll break, it’s when. And for those portals—you needed them. The Duchess needed you. That mattered more than my stability.”

  “Thank you,” Gale said after a moment. “For the portals. For the risk. For—” He gestured helplessly. “For being willing to break for people who matter to you.”

  “She matters to you.” Daimon looked away, toward the water. “And 51 matters to me. She saved me when I had nothing. When I was nothing. Just a number in a lab, and she—” His voice cracked. “She held my hand. Told me stories. Made me remember I was human when everything else said I wasn’t.”

  There it was. The core of it. Love. The fierce, desperate love of someone who’d found family in hell and refused to let go.

  “Then we find her,” Gale said firmly. “Whatever it takes. We find her.”

  Daimon nodded, throat working. But doubt shadowed his eyes, and Gale knew he was thinking the same thing—that Subject 51 was mentioned in past tense in Ressan’s notes. That six years was a long time to wait. That hope might be all they had left.

  They sat in silence for a while. The sun had moved lower, casting long shadows across the beach.

  “Someone’s watching us,” Daimon said quietly.

  Gale followed his gaze. Up on the temple terrace, a figure in white had moved close to the edge. Still too distant to make out features, but definitely female, definitely aware of their presence.

  “Priestess,” Gale confirmed. “Probably wondering what two men are doing on her beach.”

  “Are we in trouble?”

  “Depends on whether she decides to investigate.” He considered their options. “We’re technically outside the forbidden zones. The inner sanctum is up there—” he gestured to the temple complex, “—but the beaches are neutral ground. Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “It’s complicated.” Gale leaned back on his hands, affecting casualness he didn’t feel. “I once knew a fellow who tried infiltrating Calythe’s inner sanctum. Dressed as a woman. Very convincing, or so he claimed.”

  Daimon’s eyes opened fully. “What?”

  “True story.” Gale kept his gaze on the distant priestess. “This was—oh, eight years ago? Young mage, mid-twenties, more confidence than sense. Decided he wanted to see the sacred archives. Something about forbidden binding rituals he thought might help his thesis.”

  “And dressing as a woman seemed like the best approach?”

  “In his defense, he’d done extensive research on the appropriate attire. Even practiced the walk.” Gale’s mouth twitched. “The disguise held for almost three days.”

  “What happened?”

  “They discovered him midway through spring rites.” Gale kept his expression carefully neutral. “Instead of punishment, they... employed him. Extensively. For the fertility rituals.”

  Daimon blinked. Processed. “That sounds—”

  “Exhausting? Yes. He said afterward he’d never been simultaneously so satisfied and so ruined. They sent him off in a boat three days later. Last I heard, he lives in Lithara now. Sells fabric. Married one of the priestesses who participated.”

  A pause. Then Daimon asked, very seriously: “So the punishment was...?”

  “Unclear. But he seemed happy about it. Terrified, but happy.”

  Silence. Then Daimon made a sound—half-laugh, half-wheeze—that suggested his sense of humor was still functional despite everything else breaking down.

  “You made that up,” he accused.

  “I absolutely did not. His name’s Theron. Still writes occasionally. Very enthusiastic about textile quality.”

  Another laugh, strangled but real. Daimon pressed a hand over his face. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “And yet completely true.” Gale felt something unwind in his chest at the sound of Daimon’s laughter, however brief. “The priestesses here take their sacred duties very seriously. All of them.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if we get caught.”

  “Please don’t try the disguise approach. I don’t think it would work twice.”

  Daimon lowered his hands to the sand, and for a moment his expression was almost normal. Almost the nervous boy who let the Crescent’s girls call him “Puppy” and cited obscure footnotes by heart, who accepted Selina’s pastries with a puzzled look, who wasn’t Subject 54 from a laboratory of horrors.

  Then his eyes unfocused slightly, and the moment passed.

  “The flickering stopped,” he said quietly.

  Gale looked. Daimon’s outline was solid again, no wavering at the edges. His skin had returned to its normal color, no translucence. Even his breathing had steadied.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Tired. Wrung out.” Daimon shifted slowly on the sand, testing his balance. “But here. Present. Not—scattered.”

  “Good.” Gale looked up; the priestess on the terrace had disappeared, either satisfied they weren’t a threat or gone to report their presence. “She’s gone, but I think it would be wiser to find another place to rest.”

  “Or if we just leave,” Daimon cut in, already standing up. “We’ve rested enough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Daimon nodded, then moved to the water’s edge, one hand raised, fingers tracing invisible patterns in the air.

  Gale watched from a few paces back, ready to intervene if the flickering returned. But Daimon’s outline held solid, his movements deliberate rather than frantic. Whatever rest they’d managed had taken the edge off the worst of it.

  “Southeast,” Daimon murmured. “I can feel it now. The seam’s clear.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “As certain as I can be.” His hand stilled. “It’s there. Velissa. I can—” He stopped, swallowed. “I can feel the Deep Reaches underneath it. Like a pulse.”

  Gale’s chest tightened. Of course Daimon could feel the source. He’d spent fourteen years directly above it, his core shaped by its instability. The Deep Reaches was probably calling to him the way a lodestone called to iron.

  “If it’s too much—”

  “It’s not.” Daimon’s jaw set. “I’m ready.”

  He wasn’t, not really. But Gale understood that ready and willing were different things, and right now willing was all they had.

  “Then go,” Gale said quietly. “I’m right behind you.”

  Daimon’s hand moved sharply through the air.

  Reality tore.

  Not smoothly this time—the portal opened with a sound like fabric ripping under strain, edges shimmering unstably for a heartbeat before solidifying. Through it, Gale could see gray sky, reddish earth, the smell of salt and stone and something metallic underneath.

  And beneath it all, a pressure. Wrong. Heavy. The Deep Reaches, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

  Daimon stepped through without hesitation.

  Gale followed, and the portal sealed behind them with a whisper that felt too final.

  Once through, the first thing he noticed was the weight.

  Not physical—the autumn air here was much the same as Calythe’s, carrying the same salt tang and chill. But there was something else pressing down, pressing up, a thickness to the atmosphere that had nothing to do with temperature. Like standing too close to a storm that would never break, or feeling the tremor before an earthquake that refused to arrive.

  The Deep Reaches. He could feel it now, the way Daimon must feel it constantly—a presence underneath everything, vast and hungry and wrong.

  They stood in a field. Sparse grass struggling through red-brown soil, scattered with stones that might once have been walls or boundaries. The land stretched flat and desolate toward low hills in the distance, and beyond those—barely visible through gray haze—the shapes of buildings.

  Lithara. The mining town where people somehow made lives despite the weight pressing up from below.

  But they were far from it. Deliberately so, if the portal’s placement was any indication.

  Daimon swayed slightly, caught himself. His breathing came too fast, and when Gale looked at him, the boy’s pupils were dilated, unfocused.

  “Dai?”

  “I’m—” Daimon pressed a hand to his chest. “The Deep Reaches. It’s so much louder here. Like… Like standing next to a waterfall and trying to hear anything else.”

  “Can you manage it?”

  “I have to.” But his hand was shaking.

  Gale gave him a moment. Let him breathe, orient, push back against whatever pressure was building beneath his sternum. When Daimon finally lowered his hand, his eyes were clearer.

  “This way,” he said, and started walking.

  Not toward Lithara. Toward the hills.

  Gale followed, scanning their surroundings. The field was empty, lifeless in a way that went beyond simple barrenness. No animals, no birds, no insects. Nothing that should have been able to survive here struggling to do so. Just sparse grass and rust-colored earth and the oppressive weight of something vast pressing up from below.

  They walked in silence for several minutes. Then Daimon spoke, his voice distant.

  “I remember this place.”

  Gale looked at him sharply. “The field?”

  “Yes.” Daimon’s eyes tracked across the landscape like he was seeing ghosts. “They brought us out here sometimes. When we’d been... good. Cooperative.” His throat worked. “Let us graze.”

  The word landed like a stone.

  “Graze,” Gale repeated carefully.

  “That’s what they called it.” Daimon’s voice was flat, empty. “Fresh air. Sunlight. Five minutes, maybe ten if Kibas was pleased with the day’s progress. They’d lead us out, let us stand in the field, then take us back down.” A pause. “There was a trace. Magical. Bound to each of us. We couldn’t run. Couldn’t get more than twenty paces from the handlers before it—” He made a sharp gesture. “Before it reminded us where we belonged.”

  Gale wanted to say something. Wanted to find words that could somehow address the casual horror of children treated like livestock, led out to pasture between experiments. But there were no words. Nothing adequate.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

  “Don’t be.” Daimon’s hands curled into fists. “Just help me find her.”

  They kept walking.

  The hills grew closer, and as they did, Gale began to make out details. Not natural hills—at least not entirely. The slopes were too regular, too deliberate. Earth piled over stone, concealing something beneath.

  “There,” Daimon said, pointing.

  At the base of the nearest hill, barely visible against the dark stone: a door.

  Not grand or obvious. Just a simple entrance, weathered wood set into a stone frame, the kind that might lead to a root cellar or storage space if you didn’t know better. Except for the runes carved into the frame, faint but unmistakable even from this distance.

  Wards. Old ones.

  They approached slowly. Gale’s hand moved instinctively toward his focus, ready to cast if needed, but nothing stirred. No guards, no traps springing, no signs of recent habitation.

  The door just waited.

  Up close, Gale could see the damage. Scorch marks on the frame. Cracks in the stone. One side of the door hung slightly crooked, as if something had tried to tear it off from the inside.

  “The uprising,” Daimon breathed. “When 51—when she—” He stopped, stared at the door like it might hold answers. “It was chaos. Fire and screaming and everything breaking at once. She told me to run and I—”

  “You ran,” Gale finished. “Like she wanted you to.”

  Daimon nodded, throat working.

  They stood before the door for a long moment. This close, Gale could feel it more intensely—the pressure from the Deep Reaches, thrumming up through the stone, through the red earth, through his bones. How had anyone worked down there? How had children survived it?

  How had Daimon survived fourteen years of it and remained even remotely human?

  “The wards are still active,” Gale said, studying the runes. “Weakened, but active. Blood magic, I think. Keyed to—” He stopped. Looked at Daimon. “Keyed to specific signatures.”

  “Drift signatures,” Daimon said quietly. “Only Subjects could open it from outside. Anyone else trying would—” He made a sharp gesture. “It was meant to keep rescuers out. Keep us in.”

  “Can you open it?”

  “Yes.” Daimon stepped forward, right hand rising. “I can feel it. The ward recognizes—” His voice caught. “It recognizes Subject 54.”

  His palm pressed flat against the wood.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then Gale felt it—the shift in pressure, the way reality seemed to bend slightly around Daimon’s hand. Not violent, not explosive. Just—wrong. The air grew thick, sounds dulled, and the runes on the doorframe began to glow faintly with cold blue light.

  Daimon’s outline flickered.

  “Dai—”

  “I know.” His voice was strained. “It’s drawing on the Drift. The door needs—it needs that specific energy to unlock. I have to—”

  The glow intensified. Daimon’s breathing came faster, more ragged, and his edges were definitely wavering now, that translucent quality returning as the ward pulled at whatever made him Subject 54 instead of just a mage named Daimon Zaon.

  The runes flared bright.

  The door shuddered.

  And with a sound like old bones cracking, the lock gave way.

  The door swung inward on rusted hinges, revealing darkness beyond. Not the darkness of a closed space, but something deeper. Hungry. The kind of darkness that had swallowed children and spat out numbers.

  Daimon stood frozen, hand still pressed to the wood, staring into the black.

  Gale moved to his side. “We don’t have to—”

  “Yes we do.” Daimon’s voice was hollow. “She’s in there. I know she is.”

  He stepped forward, into the dark, and disappeared.

  Gale took one breath—thought of Fran, of Ludmilla, of all the ways this could end badly—and followed.

  The door swung shut behind them.

  And in the sudden, absolute darkness, Gale heard Daimon whisper: “Hello, 51. I came back for you.”