BLAKE'S P.O.V
When I woke up, the air burned in my throat.
For a moment, I didn’t know if I was alive or being roasted from the inside out. My chest felt like someone had poured fire into it and stitched it shut. Every breath hurt. Every heartbeat sounded wrong.
I pushed myself up, coughing hard. The ground pulsed beneath me, soft and alive. The dirt looked like black glass, cracked and glowing faintly under the surface. The air shimmered, bending like heat off a road.
The Veil.
But not the same one.
It was darker. Thicker. The kind of dark that pressed down on your lungs. The silence had weight. It felt like the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for something.
And then it hit me.
We hadn’t escaped.
We’d fallen deeper.
“Perfect,” I muttered. “Because things weren’t bad
