Key… had no idea what was happening. This entire situation was strange, and honestly, that was a lot coming from any Enclave member. As much as he’d come to realize over these last few weeks that his grandmother—as well as his sister and Sk’lar—had been keeping far too much from him, he had still grown up hearing stories from older relatives about what had occurred during the last visitation. Many of those stories were secondhand, of course, passed on to children by parents who had taken part in the failed attempt to lift the blood curse, but he’d still known about some of the crazy things that could occur when in the company of visitors. According to those stories, practically anything could happen during a visitation because visitors were fucking insane, probably the result of—allegedly—being unable to die from injuries sustained in their world.

  Ironically, Key wasn’t in the company of visitors, and yet, this was the craziest thing he’d seen yet. He’d faced down a Risen Guard, been inside multiple labyrinths—including one that he definitely wasn’t allowed to be inside—made friends with several visitors and basically told his family he was done with them—not to mention somehow become friends with his sister’s… something. Technically, he had always been under the assumption that Harmony and Rin had something more going on between them, but now he wasn’t so sure and that didn’t even really matter!

  What mattered was that before meeting Emilia, he never would have thought he would go against his family. Now, he knew he would have eventually—that inevitably he would have learned some of the secrets of the Enclave and been unable to stomach their hypocrisy—and that there was no going back for him. Either his family—maybe even the Enclave as a whole—would need to change, or he wouldn’t be going back; and yet, somehow, this world altering thing wasn’t even the strangest thing that had happened to him in the last few weeks!

  No, rather, the strangest thing was watching this man—who Key assumed was the Clarity leader Ajarni that everyone was looking for—pace around the room while his bodyguards stared into space. While he paced, the man ranted, his words growing increasingly nonsensical with every moment, and Key wasn’t even sure who the man was ranting to!

  Was Ajarni ranting to him?

  To his empty-eyed bodyguards?

  To some god?

  To the universe itself?

  To nothing?

  Key had no idea, but the man’s demeanour was strange and off-putting and was that a glob of hair he just ripped out?

  The universe shuddered as Ajarni tossed the lump of hair and flesh to the ground, neither he nor the Clarity members standing throughout the room so much as glancing at the bloody mass as the blood curse swirled around it. It seemed to be trying to pull itself back to Ajarni’s head, but whether it was too heavy or the man now too far away, his increasingly manic pacing taking him across the huge room, where he spun and muttered and pulled another piece of flesh from his head.

  Yeah, definitely the most disturbing, fucked up thing Key had witnessed in his life so far. This, he assumed, was why Risen Guards and Enclave members who touched too many heartcores were eventually killed: they became too unstable. Not that Key knew whether this man had touched any heartcores. Actually, given what he’d heard during conversations between Phlostra’s group of rebels and his friends, Ajarni may have never touched any. It was unclear—given the man had originally been talking to Emilia, perhaps he’d touched at least one?—but the man was definitely suffering some sort of mental break.

  The universe—aether, as he’d heard Emilia refer to it—rippled again, but without a visitor around to force the blood into the form of a weapon or other item, it did nothing more. Not yet, anyways. The blood under the globs of flesh, spread increasingly around the room, sizzled against the floor. It would slowly burn a hole through it, reaching down to the ground itself, if left to its own devices. More blood spluttered out of the man’s head and torn flesh, splattering over more of the walls and floor and the man himself.

  He didn’t seem to notice. Ajarni lifted his hand and scratched at his mangled head, steam rising from his hand as his nails and fingertips slid through toxic blood. Still, he didn’t notice, and none of his subordinates even spared him a glance.

  Key really, really wanted to get out of here, but he was tied up, his core locked away and gems ripped off him when he’d been taken from the others to be used as a bargaining chip. He wasn’t really sure what they’d been trying to get out of his family, but his message to them had been pretty clear when he’d disappeared: he wasn’t coming back. As such, it hadn’t surprised him when whatever Ajarni had asked for in exchange for his safe return was refused.

  Maybe if it had been something small, they would have agreed. Then again, given what Emilia had relayed to him about what was happening with Rin and the Risen Guard, during their brief moments together before they’d been kidnapped, every Enclave family was currently refusing to get involved in this mess, which they had already known far more about than anyone on their side had initially realized.

  Most likely, even if his family had been willing to trade for him, they wouldn’t have: they wouldn’t risk the further ire of the Risen Guard. That was fine. Key had known what he was doing when he’d disappeared. The fact that Rin had come with him was more than he’d expected—not that she was an Enclave member. Not really, anyways.

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  The Stringer family’s refusal to even discuss terms of his release had been a breaking point for Ajarni, though. Since then, the man had been collapsing into himself, and while Key had been perfectly accepting that he would likely die in this place, he really didn’t want to die at the hands of someone like this, especially since he wasn’t a visitor!

  Seriously, if no one rescued him, he might very well be stuck here, being tortured by this man for months! No, thank you! He would just have to hope someone came along and—

  The universe vibrated, each drop of blood shuddering, and Key had just enough time to spin himself and knee walk under a nearby table, shouldering it onto its side while everyone in the room ignored him. He braced himself against the underside of the table, waiting for the world to explode.

  Even with his core suppressed, he still felt it when the visitor entered the room. The aether roared, upset that it had been forced to wait so long for someone to come along and take control of the blood curse.

  “Hrell!” someone yelled, while at least two voices, further away than the first, overlapped, yelling, “hy!”

  The power of Ajarni’s blood seemed more potent than any other blood Key had come across, mostly during his travels with V and the kids. He had come across their location after Sk’lar had found him and killed the rebel Clarity member who had been accompanying him. That man had given up his life for Key—for the children they had only just found the location of. Then Sk’lar’s ice magic had bared down on their prison and Key had wondered if all their looking for the missing kids had accomplished was getting all of them—save he himself—killed by his crazed, former bodyguard.

  Key could still feel the crack of that ice, hardening over the lives of people he was trying to save, simply because Sk’lar—his one-time friend, at least to some extent—had wanted to make a point.

  That point? That until Key fell in line, everything he did that was against the mandate of his grandmother would be stymied by Sk’lar and anyone else his grandmother—the Stringer Matriarch—sent after him.

  Cruel.

  Unforgivable.

  Sk’lar killed every Clarity member who came upon them, Key trying to fight his terrifying bodyguard and break his concentration enough that he would release V and the children. He had begged, pleaded, reached out to his grandmother to ask her to stop Sk’lar.

  She had refused, and what little hope Key had still held that he had misunderstood something behind the reasons for his family’s actions had shattered. Then, Sk’lar’s ice had shattered, and there had been a small child, violence and hatred crashing out of her as the blood curse rose in call to her and her magic roared through the room.

  Maybe at that time, she could have killed Sk’lar. V hadn’t been willing to find out, not when the child in his arms was shuddering through a seizure and the teenager behind him was ripping a piece of V’s shirt off and following the visitor’s instructions to put it in the child’s mouth, lest they bite off their tongue.

  So they’d run, and for the most part, had a lead on Sk’lar, especially once Caro came too, their voice warbling as they directed them to turn this way or that, even as everyone shot them worried looks. V and Astra had been brutal as they moved, slicing down any Clarity member they came across without pause, Gale turning away when things became too heavy and Caro staring into space, much like the Clarity members who were now being slaughtered by the mystery visitors were.

  At least the local child had snapped out of it at times, though. These people… they moved, now that they were being attacked, but their heart really didn’t seem in it. Even when Astra and V had been killing Clarity members, only a few hours previous, they had seemed more motivated. Now, the fight was gone from them, their bodies barely moving as they fought. They weren’t just accepting of their death, but actively inviting it to them.

  Behind him, one of the women yelled in words Key didn’t understand. Ajarni rambled something in return, not in the language the visitor had spoken, but some nonsensical rendition of their world’s tongue, the words uneven and catching and Key felt bad for him. As much as this man—as well as his grandmother and every other Enclave family, not to mention the corrupt overseers and Risen Guard—had messed up and done terrible things, it had been in their quest to make this world a better place. This man’s attempts had failed, rather spectacularly, and he was being ripped apart—literally and figuratively—by… something. His grief? Regrets?

  Key didn’t know, but it was heartbreaking. The man deserved to die, for all he had done and what more he would do, if he had the chance and wasn’t falling apart with every second that ticked by, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t sad, didn’t mean that when his rambles cut off and there was a wet thud—perhaps the worst thing about gaining the ability to hear visitors was he had also gained the ability to hear the other sounds of the world, something that Rin had told him didn’t always happen when Risen Guard trainees touched that first heartcore—that he didn’t let his eyes fall closed, to mourn for the man Ajarni had likely once been: someone idealistic, who wanted their world to be better.

  Heavy steps approached him, followed by a young voice yelling to the others in that language of theirs. Opening his eyes again, Key gazed up at the young woman. At the very least, the fact that he was bound made it pretty obvious he was a hostage. Hopefully, these visitors would be closer to Emilia and V in their views about locals of their world—and other worlds, other raids, from his understanding.

  A man who looked similar to the girl stepped up behind her, his expression much more serious than the girl’s. His daughter? They looked about the right age to be father and daughter, but Key now knew that visitors could significantly alter their appearance and—

  His mind went blank as the tallest, most terrifying person he had ever seen stepped into his vision—and that was saying a lot, given how horrific Conrad’s body had been. This woman, however, looked simultaneously more normal and more frightening for it, like unlike Conrad—who Emilia had explained to them had messed with his appearance to make himself appear less human—this might actually be her true form. Scarred, with her black eyes and firm features. Overall, Key supposed it wasn’t so much that she looked terrifying, but that something about her…

  Something about her was dangerous, even more so than Conrad had been, somehow.

  “What do we have here?” the woman asked, head cocking as those black eyes bored into him, her words thick with an accent. “Who are you, little boy?”