Nines! Panic burned at the back of her throat again.

She commanded the emerald particles to her aid, using one of the very first spells she’d learned as a ryuu. The magic formed an enormous hand and seized the ring on the door.

Now pull.

The sparkling hand tugged. The ring strained against the door.

Harder!

The intact bottom hinge groaned.

Sora’s lungs screamed at her. She was nearly out of oxygen, and part of her was tempted to flee back to the surface.

But she was so close to success. . . . If Sora could at least get through the trap door to look at what was inside, she could go back to the surface, swallow another lungful of air, and return again.

One more pull!

The hand jerked hard, and the trap door flew out of its frame completely.

There was a dim room with bare dirt floors on the other side. It could be another trap, but she didn’t have time to hesitate.

With her lungs aching, Sora grabbed the door frame and propelled herself into what she hoped was Zomuri’s secret vault.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Broomstick watched Spirit dive into the lake. She swam slowly, as if movement were harder underwater, but she didn’t freeze up or seem bothered by the corpses suspended around her. He cheered her on from shore: “You’ve got this!” Maybe they’d finally caught a lucky break.

Suddenly, Spirit stopped swimming. She floated in the middle of the lake, nowhere near the bottom, and planted her feet as if she were standing on the ground. Broomstick ran to the edge of the water. “Spirit, no! Whatever you’re seeing in your head, it’s not real! You have to fight it off and keep going.”

She didn’t move. At the same time, the cave around Broomstick shuddered. The icicles hanging off the rock walls rattled, like a million chandeliers about to break. The walls of the cavern groaned.

Was it the monster? Or something else?

He unsheathed a sword and took several steps back from the water’s edge. Whatever was coming, he couldn’t afford to get knocked off his feet and into the lake.

The cave shook again. This time, the walls couldn’t hold on to the icicles. But the icy spears didn’t fall straight down either. Instead, they flew across the colossal cavern and began to come together just a hundred feet from where Broomstick stood. The icicles hovered in the air, assembling themselves into something.

First an icy heart.

Then a barreled chest around it, the icicles still loosely linked together like chain mail so Broomstick could see through the holes between them.

Arms. Legs. And last of all, a head with icelike swords as its teeth. The monster roared, letting out a breath as rank as thawing corpses, while its components jangled against one another, sounding much more dangerous now than collapsing chandeliers.