*POV: Asher Nightshade*
The tunnel narrowed until we had to move single file, shoulders brushing damp, living stone.
The air grew colder with each step — thin, sharp, unnatural.
I caught the shift before I saw it: the faint shimmer, like heat waves, stretching across the passage ahead.
Akira grabbed my arm without warning.
"Stop."
Her voice was low but commanding.
I froze.
A few steps ahead, figures were forming out of the mist — familiar faces.
Dead faces.
Wolves I had failed. Friends who had bled out on battlefields long since claimed by dust.
They weren’t real.
But gods, they looked it.
One of them, a boy with silver hair and sunken eyes, stepped forward. His mouth moved, but the voice that came out was wrong — hollow, rasping.
"You left us behind, Asher."
Another figure
