Siena

SIENA

Run.

woke on the floor of the abandoned shelter as the frogs choked on their own croaks. The skittering in the trees, the splashing of scavengers in the muck, the entire swamp fell silent like the land itself feared the approaching rumble.

It was the same noise she'd heard before, first on Wolf Ridge when they found the body, and again on Mount Agnes. It sounded like hunger—like the forest itself was starving. Never had it sucked the sound out of the atmosphere before.

It was stronger now.

She shook Emmett, and he shot up in his sleeping bag.

Something's wrong, she tried to say, except the words didn't leave her mouth. She couldn't speak, just like the frogs.

kicked away her sleeping bag. Emmett was quicker to act, grabbing her wrist and dragging her to her feet. They fumbled around each other in the dark and shoved their stuff into the bags. She held her breath like it would prevent her from accidentally stepping on a rotten plank and quietly crashing into the water beneath.

The rumble strengthened, the vibration drowning her pounding pulse. Her trembling fingers slipped on the wet bootlaces as she tied them, and she hissed a muted swear, panic revving in her chest.

Emmett helped her into her backpack and stayed close as she opened the silent door, the wood of the platform not even creaking beneath their feet. She maneuvered down the ladder, clinging to the rungs. How deep was the water? Half a meter? Dawn revealed only a murky surface. She'd hurt herself further if she jumped right, toward solid ground.

The rumble muddled her thoughts. She could feel Emmett's impatience wordlessly simmering behind her.

let go of the ladder and jumped.

Her boots slammed into mud, and she gasped as pain punched through her knee.

The ground shifted as Emmett landed to her right. The moment he grabbed her hand to run, the rumble evaporated, and the swamp crashed back.

The crickets, the frogs. Every reptilian splash. The creaks, groans, and rustles of the cypress trees. The water. Everything thundered so loudly, clapped her free hand over her ear.

"!" Emmett roared, and touched his fingers to his own throat in surprise.

Releasing a strangled cry, she dropped Emmett's hand and whipped her head to scan the cypresses beyond the water's calm surface.

He spoke to her through the trees voicelessly, in a language meant only for her.

You've imagined nothing.

Dawn was still young, but strung across the branches, a silken web caught the first glimmer of light.

Beetle webs. Not a threat, but a sign. Everything she saw was real. Everything happening was real.

" What the hell was that?" Emmett said.

She brushed beneath her eyes, fingers wet when she pulled her hand away. He couldn't know, could he? Every delusion, every moment she'd second-guessed her own beliefs. If everything was real, then nothing made sense.

If she had imagined nothing, then she'd been right all along.

"—"

She cleared her throat. "The Shadow. The thing that killed Isaac. He's here, or was."

"What? How do you—" He cut himself off. "We need to leave, now !"

But The Shadow didn't want to hurt them... not right now, at least. couldn't explain this to Emmett. She couldn't even explain it to herself. A gut feeling wasn't a conclusion. It wasn't even a hypothesis.

He spoke to her again. You imagine nothing.

He was still here, watching them, and capturing nothing but her attention. He only wanted to deliver a message so she could have faith in herself.

She swiped her hand over the belt of her bag and the outline of her pill bottle in the pocket. Why do you want to soothe me? she thought. Why aren't you attacking?

Even though he hadn't attacked yet, standing here granted The Shadow an invitation. She gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering, turning back to Emmett. "Help me get out of here."

He complied, threading his arm between her waist and her pack to help keep the weight off her bad knee. They hurried south.

"How do you know that was The Shadow?" he asked, out of breath from their pace.

"It's just a hunch," she admitted. "That rumble—remember when I woke you up on Wolf Ridge because I heard something?"

"That was what you heard?" he asked, the question deeply skeptical.

"Other times, too."

Emmett released her and swept in front, and followed as they maneuvered across a hardwood hammock, the only natural areas of the swamp that were dry, keeping clear of the water.

"I thought it wanted to kill you," he said. "That's why we're running, isn't it?"

She mimicked his footing as he stepped over a rotten log in their path. "Yes." Except The Shadow hadn't wanted to kill her this morning. He'd only wanted to talk to her, to tell her she had imagined nothing, something she'd desperately wanted to hear for years from anyone who'd agree. The Shadow had somehow known, which meant it could infiltrate her thoughts.

No, she wouldn't dare believe he could read her mind, not without evidence. A cold sweat broke across the back of her neck regardless. "I can't explain what happened back there, not with experiencing that silence only once."

"I'd rather us avoid that ever happening again, if we can help it," Emmett said. "Scared the shit out of me."

"Yeah." She fell quiet, focusing on the path and the easiest way to wind south around the water. She and Emmett worked together by pointing out crossable hammocks. With the help of her adrenaline, the pain in her knee dulled to a manageable ache.

The swamp atmosphere remained both cold and humid. Every time stole a glance at the sky, she was met with cloud cover.

"It's strange," she said. "Plant life here is thriving. It's so humid that the rate of evapotranspiration must be high, but it's cold. It shouldn't be cold, not with all this summer growth." She slid her phone from her jacket pocket to take a few pictures.

"Maybe it's a cold spell," Emmett offered, but that conclusion didn't satisfy her. Other processes were taking place in this swamp. She doubted Emmett would let her set up a picnic right now to further study the biome.

She needed to understand the Briardark better to learn how to escape it. All Isaac's map had offered was a symbol for the exit, but not how to get out.

Emmett kept casting glances at her. His behavior was another little awry thing. A man who'd do everything to keep her at the research cabin was suddenly the man leading her forward. She couldn't chalk it up to just a change of heart. Whatever else had happened to Emmett was a missing puzzle piece she needed.

Eventually, she'd have to pry it from him.

The swamp habitat finally subsided, and the land grew drier and firmer beneath their feet.

"You need a break?" he asked.

She nodded, slipped out of her pack, and massaged her knee. Bending over, she grabbed her bottle from the side pocket of her bag and greedily drank the inch of fresh water left.

Emmett held his bottle out to her, but he only had a couple of inches left in the bottom of his.

shook her head. "Save it. I'm fine."

He gave her one of his dad looks as he screwed the lid back on, still skilled at sensing her anxiety. "We'll fill up as soon as we find a creek, okay?"

"Sure." She cast a glance over Emmett's shoulder and the route south.

envisioned her map and matched it to the surrounding environment. They were in the valley. On her Deadswitch map, the valley swept below the U-shaped range of the sister peaks: Agnes, Charlotte, and Lucille.

Thick overgrowth covered the valley in Deadswitch Wilderness, the terrain usually difficult to traverse. wasn't the kind of wilderness survivalist who traveled with a machete. Hacking through brush triggered her allergies, and there was no peaceful way to relieve your bowels when everything poked you in the ass.

But instead of overgrowth, a trail wide enough to be a road led south, foliage and trees growing wildly everywhere else. The vegetation off trail basked in a sheen of light from the partial sun, but darkness covered the path. None of it made sense until she looked up.

"You see that?" Her voice trembled. "Or am I seeing something that isn't actually there? "

You imagine nothing.

Emmett's expression shifted to horrified. "No, you're not seeing things. Unless I am too."

Above, a black gash split the sky in half, like the darkest part of the universe had bled through the atmosphere and created a river south.

"Is this The Shadow, too?" Emmett took hold of 's wrist again, readying them to run. Except according to their map, south was the only way out of the valley.

"I don't know," said. "But it's covering the path perfectly, which is why nothing grows on it. How is the streak in the sky blocking the light from hitting the ground at all times of the day?"

"Something is unzipping the sky, and you're thinking about plants?"

Her lips perked in a smile, but when she dropped her gaze, unease lingered on Emmett's face.

This felt like a trap, except didn't understand how, or why, or what. Every question she had could only be thrown atop the pile that crushed her, and the fever dream of anomalies without data or evidence made it impossible to be cautious.

I am everywhere.

If The Shadow wanted to capture her, he wouldn't hand over an easy path out of here.

drew a breath, crawling from a brewing cesspool of her primal fear. She couldn't forget to collect data in her panic, so she snapped pictures of the sky and the shadowed path before them.

She refocused her attention on Emmett as he wiped his hand on his shirt. It left a rusty trail. "You're bleeding."

Emmett lifted his hand to inspect it. "Yeah. Caught a splinter on the way down that ladder. Not as bad as a paper cut." He quickly changed the subject, nodding toward the clear path before them. "Looks like the only way to go."

She stepped forward and winced as her knee twinged. "Looks like. "

"Shit," he muttered, and followed her south.

Despite the sun, thunderheads rolled toward the gash in the sky. Light crept through the clouds' cracks and shot through the forest in rays, and could almost hear the sighs of delight from the ferns and tender saplings.

She fell behind Emmett to scan the woods. Everything rustled and shook, not as though the thickets hid deer or predators, but like a great wind was caught within the foliage and trying to escape. Before her eyes, a hemlock bent beneath an unseen force and into a beam of light.

No—not an unseen force. The trees were heliotropic, flexibly stretching toward the light in a matter of seconds. Sunflowers could do such a thing, but not trees.

Awestruck, opened her mouth to tell Emmett, but he was far in front now, and her knee prevented her from running to catch up. He slowed at a brook.

Perfect timing. She was no longer thirsty, which meant that dehydration was setting in.

Once at the water, she helped Emmett filter and fill four bottles between the two of them, then chewed up an energy bar, her initial excitement over the trees deflating. There was no point in telling Emmett. He didn't care about reasons or consequences, only whether the short-term result gave him more control.

She'd keep this discovery to herself, for now. Save it for when she could tell someone who cared.

They kept moving. The trail offered little variance, like they were stuck on a treadmill. Only her level of anxiety fluctuated.

You imagine nothing. How could she believe such a thing when nothing behaved like it was supposed to?

glanced up to gauge the time of day, but the black streak through the sky still covered the sun. It had shifted west, too. Earlier, the gash had split the sky in half.

"Wait a second." She ventured off the trail and into the brush. The sun peeked out from behind the gash.

It moved with the sun. That was why light never touched the path.

returned to Emmett. "We have two hours of daylight left."

He caught his breath. "How much ground do you think we can cover with your knee?"

stretched out her leg, massaging it again. "A few more miles."

Thankfully, they didn't need to travel so far. Fifteen minutes later, the path fanned into a clearing, and a humble cabin stood before them, its logs cracked and faded, the roof covered in debris. Vines twisted across the ground and up the cabin's sides.

"Sen." Emmett pointed up.

The onyx river through the sky abruptly ended above the cabin. Beyond the clearing, the thicket thrived, vegetation no longer forced to cower away from shadow.

A trap, her brain screamed again, even though they'd covered miles more with the trail than they would have otherwise.

"What if someone's in there?" Emmett asked.

She studied the cabin's perimeter. "There aren't any tracks. The place looks overgrown, but we should still be careful."

Sick dread filled her gut. A possible inhabitant mattered little compared to the danger of having been led here.

Emmett crept toward the cabin, and she followed at a distance. The closest window shutter hung ajar, nothing inside but darkness. Still, her pulse raced with a warning. Both of them were weaponless except for their knives. They weren't equipped to face someone hostile.

Once he reached the cabin's back wall, Emmett hooked a finger beneath the shutter and gently pulled it back. The hinge shrieked, and winced.

He turned toward her. "Empty."

She gingerly climbed over vines toward the front of the cabin. Above, clouds poured across the sky from the east, a storm imminent. They'd made it just in time .

She rounded the cabin. A sign hung above the front door, letters burned into the wood.

Outpost 2

Emmett approached from the other side, battling the brush. stepped forward and pushed open the unlocked door.

The air smelled of dust and pine, the only furniture inside a table and two chairs tucked against the wall. Floorboards creaked beneath her as she crossed the room to the back shutter and propped it open with a stake.

"Look at this." Emmett nodded to the top of the table. Approaching, made out the symbols and shapes of a map painted on the table's surface, the design similar to the one on the wall in the research cabin.

"Isaac," she said reverentially, brushing her fingers over a circle with two slashes atop Mount Agnes. She traced a line down a weaving path to the same symbol at the bottom of the map: their destination. Isaac had called them passages. He was here once. This map was his. She knew it. She also knew the same Shadow that had poured from Isaac's eyes and mouth had led them here.

Unproven.

"Look at this." Emmett pointed to a pattern of waves and cattails, Outpost 1 written above a hut symbol. They'd stayed there last night.

's finger landed on a hut farther south. "Outpost 2. We are here." She counted the huts along the trail—seven in all. "This trail winds through the valley. Why was ours straight?" She drew a straight line with her finger from Outpost 1 to Outpost 2.

"Probably has something to do with that thing in the sky, but other than that..." Emmett trailed off. "Maybe it will still be there tomorrow. Clear our route again."

"Maybe." She turned toward the open window.

The trail they'd taken here had vanished, an impossibly dense thicket in its place.

The gash in the sky was gone.