Skye is dead.
How she perished is a mystery. All she knows is that she is trapped in After, a makeshift city of souls surrounded by infinite darkness and terrifying monsters that tear ghosts apart.
But while all other ghosts accept the eternity of...
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"Bloody Hell..." Vale breathed.
"Hell is right," I said in agreement.
Lightning shot from the half-sun, and an angry pulse emanated from it, dying the entire sky blood-red. Crimson beams of light ricocheted from growing purple thunderheads, smothering any remaining stars. Towers of smoke rose over After and joined the clouds above. Scores of distant screams filled the air as the city burned.
After's destroyer, the behemoth, let out another scream. It was like a colossal upside-down heart, pulsing and spasming atop a tangled thicket of enormous black arteries and veins. Vascular tentacles unwound from its throbbing dome of a body like whips and sliced apart skyscrapers as the beast set about destroying its own empire.
I ducked and covered my head when debris and shrapnel rained down. There came a roar like an approaching tsunami. Down the street from where we hid, buildings toppled and cars and hollows were crushed as a tentacle swept across the ground, coming straight for us.
"Shit! Run!" I pulled my two friends up and together we ran. The tentacle rapidly gained on us, chasing us away from the buried crystal.
"This way!" Vale shouted. She shoved Crow and I to the side, and we all fell into an opening in the ground; a crevasse carved by an earthquake. The tentacle slid by overhead, obliterating everything in its path. The rumble aboveground grew more and more distant by the second.
Then all I heard was whimpering. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Next to me, Vale stood determined and strong, with hatred in her eyes as she glared upward at the tunnel entrance. As soon as the tentacle disappeared down the street, Crow offered his spear toward me. "Take this."
"Your spear?" I asked, taking the weapon from him.
"You need a weapon." He unloosed his two sickles from his waist and gave them an expert twirl in each hand. "I am familiar with these, too." He was already clambering out of the crevasse, following his crows. He shook dust from himself and pointed his sickles at the beast. "Come. We cannot stay."
Some innate part of my brain begged me to stay in the dark, out of sight, where it was safe. But Crow was right. We couldn't stay here. We had to wake the sun.
So Vale and I joined the blind ghost aboveground, and we ran. I could see the eyes of the behemoth peeking over the stops of skyscrapers, each one moving independently-all searching for one thing. One hollow.
A single pupil constricted as it locked onto me.
The beast roared, and the city shook.
Crow let out a growl. His eyes turned red. "Duck!" he hissed to Vale me. A whip of wind shot forth from him, striking the giant monster with the force of a hurricane. The top-heavy beast wavered, its tentacles writhing for balance, but to no avail. There was a thunderous rumble as the creature fell backward behind the high-rises. A twister surrounded the beast, keeping it trapped in a prison of wind.
