She nodded. “I think you’re right.” Removing her helmet, she sniffed the air. “Everything is still. Quiet.”

And it was.

They’d crossed over to Ryukage’s domain.

* * *

Here, in kage-tenchi, time blurred together, without day or night. There was no heat. No cold. Only the ever-present and all-consuming darkness.

It felt suffocating. Terrifying.

All they could hear was the beating of their own hearts. Koichi couldn’t even feel the boy’s body heat through the sack now. It was as if something drank it up.

He felt eyes on him.

It felt as if they were touching him somehow.

Glancing at his skin, he was relieved to find it bare except for nervous sweat and goose bumps.

“Bet if I said boo you’d jump ten feet.”

Unamused by that comment, he slid his gaze to Masaru. “Bet if you said boo I’d gut you where you stand.”

“Why am I always separating you two?” Keiko stepped between them, then gestured forward. “And how could you miss the most important part?”

It took Koichi a second to realize what she meant.

There, in the darkness, he could just make out a twisted version of Hanzō’s Mahō-jō. The castle was a sick mockery of all the brave students and teachers who’d dedicated their lives to keeping evil creatures like the Ryukage at bay.

In this realm, it rose up in the distance like a phantom against the black background, sinister and spooky. A chilling warning to anyone who saw it.

Are you kidding me?

In some ways, it was virtually indistinguishable. The mazelike road leading to it that twisted and turned in order to confuse visitors, with bricks of terrified faces imprinted into the stones.

There were even black dragons perched atop it . . .

Only those dragons paid them no heed.

As above, so below.

How could he have forgotten that? It made sense the Ryukage’s home would look so much like Hanzō’s. They were opposites.

Hanzō above.

Ryukage below.

Koichi took a step forward, but Masaru stopped him. “You can’t walk up the drive. These stones don’t test your purity. They test your unfailing loyalty to the Ryukage.”

Oof! Good to know.

Since he was an enemy to the Ryukage, that left him out.

“So how do we cross?” Koichi asked.

With a sly grin, Masaru looked up at the harsh black stonework of the walls. “So . . . how are your climbing skills, mortal?”

Was he serious?

Or delirious?

Either way, he wasn’t on board with this.

Rolling his eyes in aggravation, Koichi glanced toward the angry black spikes that rose up along the roof of the sinister castle like the spine of a crouching beast. At least the Ryukage was devoted to his villain theme.

Way to commit . . .

But truthfully, that was good for them. If the Shadow Lord hadn’t so earnestly embraced his evil ways, there would be no way to climb up.