There was something greatly unsettling in the way that the shadows swallowed the sky. Too dark for their own good, and bound by nothing more than an endless stream of darkness. Amaris walked with an uneasy step fastened to his gait.

He felt watched. Seen. Hunted.

This was not the Moon he knew, like the other half of his soul. And no longer was it the world he had spent the past two years growing within. Something had shifted, and he worried that, despite everything that he and Aelia had found, it would do nothing to change the course of history—the course of their future, and the well-being of their world.

What if this—this endless darkness, cast beneath a crimson eye, was all that they would forever know? What if the world were never to return to the way it was before?

The thought alone was just as unsettling as the crisp air that caressed his shoulders as he walked beside his other half. His eyes would pass between either side of them, watching from his periphery, for any darker silhouettes to emerge from beneath the red moon’s glow.

He half expected them—something—to pop out.

When they finally reached the entrance of the tunnel that had brought them to the south, Amaris let out a sigh of relief—accompanied by the stolen words his twin uttered. Finally. He thought the same.

The moon-kissed boy, no longer feeling as sure as he had when he had first followed the guidance of the dream-visitor to the south, gave his sister a nod. Let’s get the hell out of here, he murmured to Aelia hastily, just as his ears would twitch and curve to a ghostly sound he swore crinkled in the darkness behind them. Something is wrong about this place.