faint trail lit up, descending into the caverns. Broomstick couldn’t see it, though, so she went first, and he followed with his compass.
“Mark each turn in the ice,” Sora said.
“Why?” Broomstick carved Luna’s triplicate whorls into the tunnel wall at their first bend.
“In case . . .”
“In case what?”
Sora pursed her lips. “In case something happens to me and you don’t have my ryuu particles to help guide you out on the journey back.” She turned away so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction. They knew they were risking their lives. But it was still sobering to think about actually dying.
As they traveled deeper, the natural skylights vanished, leaving them in the dark. Sora commanded her magic to light the way, and the emerald dust glowed, casting an eerie luminescence around her and Broomstick’s shadows on the walls of ice.
An hour into the tunnels, Broomstick swore.
“What is it?” Sora asked.
He showed her his compass. The needle had begun to spin in lazy circles, as if unable to find north but not caring.
“We must have run into the magnetic fields mentioned in Mama’s research,” Sora said.
“Yeah, which also means that at least one of her notes is true. And maybe the others are, too.”
Sora stopped for a moment as this sank in. First, magnetic fields to confuse those who tried to find Zomuri’s vault. If the notes were correct, next would be “ghost faces,” whatever that meant. Then a snow monster. And a lake filled with water that gave you hallucinations of the worst version of yourself.
She ran through the details of her plan.
When the “ghost faces” appeared, she’d make herself and Broomstick invisible, in hopes that the ghost guards wouldn’t be able to see them.
Broomstick’s bombs were for blowing up the snow monster.
When that hurdle was cleared, they’d reach through their gemina bonds to Daemon and Fairy. The idea was they’d tether Sora and Broomstick to reality, like when Sora had been shot with genka and Daemon had coaxed her back to reason through their bond. Of course, this situation could be totally different, but it was the best analogy she had. She and Daemon, and Broomstick and Fairy, had spent over a decade bonded to each other, finely honed to every spike or nuance in their gemina connection. If there was any chance of Sora and Broomstick keeping their wits about them as they swam through the Lake of Nightmares to get to Zomuri’s vault, their gemina bond was it.
Admittedly, it was a sketchy plan. But it was what Sora could do with the very limited information she had. She just had to trust herself to adapt to the rest.
They followed the path of ryuu particles deeper into the tunnels. As the hours passed, the sweet perfume of winter berries faded, replaced instead by the strangely dead, hollow smell of cold, stale air. The hairs on Sora’s arms stood up. Everything about these barren ice caves felt like a cemetery.
Broomstick pointed at a part of the glacier wall that was recessed, with six long icicles like spears stabbing the labyrinth floor. “Is it me, or does that seem ominous?”
A sprinkle of ice fell on them from above.
Sora and Broomstick jumped. But in the same second, they had knives and throwing stars in hand.
Silence.
Was it the ghost faces? Or the snow monster? Or another threat they didn’t know about?
“Get some of your bombs out,” Sora whispered to Broomstick. He palmed a few of the smaller ones from his bag.
They waited.
No more ice falling.
No monstrous footsteps.
Nothing.
Sora exhaled.
And then they heard it. A steady pounding—no, a beating from the tunnels above them, growing louder as it approached.
“What in Luna’s name is that?” A chill as cold as the ice caves themselves ran up Sora’s back.
“It sounds like a monster,” Broomstick said, eyes wide with fear. “I say we run.”
They sprinted down the tunnel. The noise behind them grew.
“It’s gaining on us,” Sora said, putting on more speed. She took a corner too quickly and slammed into a wall of ice. Broomstick crashed into her, and they tumbled to the icy ground.
“Dead end,” she said, scrambling to her feet. They had to backtrack.
She ran the way they’d come. There had been a fork in the tunnels not too far up—
As soon as they reached the intersection, over fifty owls with pale, white faces met them. The owls shrieked in unison, wielding talons like blades on their feet.
Oh stars, it wasn’t a single enemy. Ghost faces, plural.
The synchronized beating of their wings echoed