Slim, almost elegant tendrils of Shadow are curling from the circular rune on its charred chest, a palpable tang of energy hovering in the air around it. Cautiously, I pass my hand through the smoke, and the tendrils flash silver as they prickle my skin with an unnatural shiver. The Wand of Myth’s subtle, comforting buzz against my calf cuts out.

Like it’s hiding.

Focus sharpening, I draw my hand through the tendrils, the unsettling shiver increasing, then press my palm down on the Shadow rune.

The shivering energy explodes outward, the purple world dimming. My fastlines appear from beneath my gray glamour, the dark, looping lines taking form on my hand and wrist. Alarm knifes through me as I move to wrench my hand back, only to find it fused to the rune.

A translucent image of Lukas appears, superimposed on the scene before me. He’s shirtless and breathing heavily, his muscular body bound to the stony ground by some kind of Shadow vines, his wand hand splayed out and vine-webbed to a cavern’s floor. Bloodred lash marks crisscross his chest, and there are bars made of Shadow behind him.

Every emotion in me surges up, hot and hard.

“Lukas!”

He meets my eyes, defiance rearing in his gaze’s green depths. “Go straight to hell, Marcus,” he snarls as a phantom hand clutching a dark gray wand is raised before me, seeming as if it’s my hand, my vision. The wand lowers and touches Lukas’s fastlines, and he groans, body stiffening in evident pain.

“Lukas!” I cry again, scrabbling to touch him, my hand passing straight through the phantom image. Energy prickles along the back of my neck, and I’ve the sudden, unnatural sense of an awareness provoked.

Lukas’s image whisks from sight, my focus hurtling back to the wraith bat corpse before me, the Shadow rune’s hold on my hand abruptly releasing.

My throat clenches. “No... Lukas...no.”

I frantically press both hands onto the rune, but its smoke has vanished, along with the mist that was emanating from the runes on the other bats, only their gray imprints remaining. I lift my hands, a light-headed rush streaking through me as I find that my fastlines are once more hidden beneath my glamour.

As if something cut a connection.

My heart pounds harder.

Lukas is alive. He’s alive.

Frantic, I struggle to find clarity. The not-fully-charged portal I went through must have had a sizable time lag, I realize, even though the journey seemed over in the blink of an eye.

My mind-bending concern intensifies. How long has Lukas been in Vogel’s grip? Why was I briefly able to see my fastlines?

And that Shadowfire of Vogel’s—how did Lukas survive it?

The answer hits me like a bolt to the heart.