The smell of ozone, blood, and burning flesh hadn't been a hallucination or a leak from a room above. It was in the very air of the chamber I had just crawled into.
I stood in the center of the dark, circular room, the heavy iron wrench shaking in my hand. My body was wracked with shivers from the toxic pre-heat, and the warm blood still trickling down my legs served as a terrifying, ticking clock. My forced vision had promised me a tunnel to the waterways, a path to freedom guarded by Kael.
But as the heavy iron hatch I had just climbed through slammed shut and locked automatically behind me, I realized the brutal truth.
The tunnel wasn't an escape route. It was a funnel.
I hadn't seen the future; I had seen a carefully constructed psychic trap. The Council knew the layout of their ow
