The shadows didn't wait. They lunged the moment the train doors opened, their teeth made of silence, their hunger endless.
The storm clawed at them, hot wind screaming acros the endles plain. Ash swirled in choking waves, stinging Kai's eyes and burning his throat. The train was gone—dissolved into smoke as though it had never existed. Behind them was nothing but void. Ahead, the Ivory Tower loomed, imposibly far, impossibly tall.
Kai clutched Airi's wrist, his own hand trembling as much as hers. The girl's sketchbook was still pressed tight against her chest like a shield.
The shadows closed in.
They werent walking. They werent even crawling. Their movements were wronglike film frames stitched together out of order. One moment they were a dozen paces away, the next they lurched forward in jerks and snaps, their bodies unraveling into coils of smoke before reforming again.
The whispering voices grew louder. Kai couldn't tell if they came from the storm, from the creatures, or from inside his own head.
"Run."
"Fight."
"Join us"
Airi tugged at his sleeve. "Kai we have to move!"
They broke into a run. The dunes shifted beneath their feet like quicksand, collapsing under every step. The world seemed to hate them, to pull them down.
Kai stumbled, ash filling his shoes. The storm hissed laughter.
Behind them, one shadow surged forward, its form sharpening into something vaguely human: long limbs bent the wrong way, teeth gnashing in the hollow of its face. It leapt.
Kai shoved Airi aside. The impact slammed into his chest, knocking him into the ash. The creature pinned him, smoke dripping from its jaws like black tar. Rows of teeth gnashed inches from his throat.
"Kai!" Airi screamed.
He grabbed for anything, his hands sinking into the ashen soil. Cold, lifeless dust. No rocks, no weaponsnothing but emptiness. His lungs burned as the weight pressed down.
The shadow's teeth closed in.
Instinct took over. Kai rammed his fist upward into its "face." His knuckles tore through smoke and flesh that wasn't flesh, warm and wet and wrong. The creature shriekedno, all the shadows shrieked, their scream vibrating through the storm.
The thing reeled back, its body unraveling, but Kai's hand came away slick with something dark and tar-like. His stomach lurched at the stench of rot.
The shadow didn't die. It reformed, snarling, lunging again.
Airi's voice cracked: "Stay down!"
She had ripped open her sketchbook. Her pencil moved so fast it was a blur, scrawling lines, desperate and wild. She turned the page toward the monster.
And for one impossible momenther drawing came alive.
The sketch of a jagged blade burst into reality, glowing faintly as if lit from within. It flickered, unstable, like a dream struggling to remain solid.
Kai's body moved before his mind caught up. He snatched the blade, feeling its strange warmth. The shadow lunged and Kai drove the weapon into its chest.
The creature shrieked as the blade exploded in light. Its body tore apart into wisps of smoke, scattering into the storm.
The weapon dissolved in his grip, crumbling into ash.
Silence. For half a heartbeat, silence.
Then the others screamed.
Dozens of shadows surged forward.
Kai pulled Airi to her feet. "We can't fight them all run!"
They stumbled across the shifting dunes, the storm clawing at their clothes, the whispers growing louder. Every step toward the Tower seemed harder, the land itself dragging them back.
Airi gasped for air. "The Tower it's pulling us…"
"No," Kai panted. "The world is pushing us toward it."
The ground trembled. Ash geysers erupted, skeletal arms clawing at the air before dissolving. The shadows poured after them, their gnashing maws opening wider, wider, until they were nothing but jaws stretching across faceless heads.
The Tower pulsed in the distance one great heartbeat, echoing through the Veil.
Kai and Airi collapsed against a half-buried ruin, its stone blackened and cracked. The shadows slowed, circling, their smoke weaving together. They weren't attacking yet. They were herding.
"Kai…" Airi whispered. "Why us?"
He had no answer. His chest heaved, his hand still sticky with black blood. He wasn't a fighter. He wasn't a hero. He was just a student who missed the last train.
The shadows parted.
Something else was coming.
From the storm emerged a tall figure draped in chains. Its body was humanoid, but stretched unnaturally thin, its skin pale as bone. Shackles clanged with every step, dragging broken spears and blades across the ash. Where its eyes should have been burned two points of white fire.
The shadows bowed as it passed.
Kai's blood froze.
The figure's voice was not a whisper, but a roar that tore through the storm:
"Wardens do not allow the unmarked to wander."
It raised one chained hand, and the ground split open, spilling more smoke.
Airi clutched his arm, trembling. "What is that?"
Kai swallowed hard, his voice a rasp. "Something worse."
The Warden pointed at them. The chains around its body writhed, hungry.
The shadows screamed as one, and charged.
End of Chapter 2