Page 94 of The Madness Within

Then everything wentcold.The room darkens. The flame sputtered. Dorian tensed beneath me.

And we both heard it, something ripping. A tearing sound, like fabric being split by claws.

A sound that should not exist here.

The temperature dropped what felt like ten degrees. The spell circle dimmed. The candle extinguished itself.

I scrambled up, already summoning power to my palms.

Dorian was up before me, bare but terrifying, fangs out, magic already crackling in his fingers.

And then we saw it.

A figure, oozing through the stone wall as if it were smoke. Humanoid, barely. Its eyes glowed green. Its mouth stretched too wide. Its body flickered like a broken television signal.

“First one through,” Dorian muttered, stepping in front of me. “It didn’t waste any time.”

“What is it?” I asked, the hairs on my arms rising.

“Not of this world.”

The creature turned its gaze to me.

Its voice rattled through the chamber, not from its mouth, but from inside our minds.

“Watcher.”

My heart stuttered.

“Did it just—?”

“It knows you,” Dorian said, jaw tight.

The creature smiled. Rows of teeth. Too many. Too sharp. It moved without warning. And the fight began.

Chapter Forty-One

??Nothing is as it Seems

Ember

The creature lunged, fast, jagged, and impossible.

Its limbs twisted in directions that made my stomach turn. The air around it warped, like it wasn’t fully tethered to this world. Like it’s stillslippingthrough the Veil.

But its hunger was here. Fully present. Focused entirely on me.

Watcher.

That word still echoed in my skull, like it branded itself there the second it spoke.

I didn’t think. I reacted.

I hurled a pulse of magic from my palm, white hot, a surge I didn’t know I could summon. It slammed into the creature and sent it flying into the far wall. Stone cracked. Dust exploded.

But it didn’t fall. Itlaughed.

The sound was wrong. Wet. Hollow. Like it didn’t come from lungs, but from something behind the wall of the world.

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