When I opened my eyes, the world was wrong.
The air was thick, heavy, and smelled of iron and wet stone. Darkness pressed in from all sides, but the shadows moved like they were alive. Shapes shifted at the edges of my vision, whispering, laughing, twisting into forms I didn’t want to look at.
And Gage… he was right in front of me. But he wasn’t the Gage I knew.
His skin was pale, almost gray. His eyes glowed gold, and his chest rose and fell rapidly as if he had been running for hours. He was trembling, but it wasn’t just fear. Something else moved under his skin, something alive, twisting.
“Gage.” I whispered, stepping closer. “It’s me. Trinity. You have to fight it.”
He didn’t answer. His head was down, his hands shaking, and every so often a shadow flickered across him—like the gu
