The shadow held up a hand, and the crowd stifled their cries. Dust still hung in the air, making the being’s details unreadable except for its shadowy shape. It stepped down, and the shadow began contorting and snapping as if its bones were being adjusted and realigned. The figure grew to ten feet tall, and when it walked, it jerked its limbs unnaturally, as if controlled by a puppeteer. The body that had been pierced by the shadow’s red spike had collapsed onto the ground. And in response, the other masked rebels surrounded the being in a crescent formation, with weapons drawn—hand blades and short swords—and white thin smoke floating around their chests.

  What is that? Fern asked.

  I’m…not sure, it may be like their form of magic here? I wondered.

  “Come, kids!" The father grabbed his son, with the eye-patch, and a young girl by the arms and turned to flee. He froze when he saw us blocking the alley. I stepped aside and waved them through. He bowed quickly and rushed past, but no one else seemed to follow his lead. I shifted my feet and eyed the scene carefully.

  The street fell silent except for the pained cries of the giant horse, as it flailed bound on the ground. I squinted through the settling dust, trying to see what lay beneath that living shadow. And finally details started to emerge.

  A white, hairless face, with pale pink lips, wore an ornate covering over its eyes and nose. The golden cathedral blind mask dripped down the beings cheeks, and held an arcing crown of tiny blades from ear to ear. The beings stretched and I saw that its clothers were a bodysuit patchwork of different colored fabrics, and small black shoes. It bent forward to examine each of its masked attackers individually, and when it opened its mouth, a clicking sound, like cogs turning in a broken clock, crawled out between his set of razor sharp teeth.

  "Well, this is unexpected of the Criers." Its voice sent ice down my spine and made every instinct inside me scream ‘run.’

  Raine tugged my sleeve, trying to pull us backwards, following other people also quietly retreating down the alley. I nodded and reached for Nanda, but he stood transfixed by the horror unfolding before us.

  Then, the being straightened its back with a CRACK and faced us like a spotlight.

  "NO ONE SHALL MOVE WITHOUT IGI-IGI’S PERMISSION,” it bellowed.

  The fleeing crowd stopped mid-step as if time itself had frozen.

  The creature seemed satisfied with that and lowered its head, stretching an unsettlingly long neck forward to bring it face-to-face with one of the masked men. "Tell me, Crier. What exactly was the grand plan this time? How many times must we put down your little rebellions?”

  The rebel stood silent, weapons steady despite facing this nightmare.

  The shadow straightened and cocked its head with another mechanical click. “No response? How dull. I suppose this time I should hang you all for the whole slum to see. If you think you can take me on because you finally learned a little bit of Breath, you’re naive. That work is novice material.” It raised its hand and tapped the Crier’s chest with one of the being’s long fingers.

  A blinding flash erupted from one of the masked men’s hands. And the entire street lit up in a white light. Several people screamed and the monsterous being hissed.

  "Now!" a Crier shouted. Feet moved on the stone, pattering quickly. Then the sound of blades ripping and tearing cloth cut through the air.

  The creature started to laugh. "Fools. Open. YOUR. EYES!"

  The light vanished. My vision cleared. And ahead of us, all of the masked men, all the Criers, had a red spike stabbed through their skulls, holding their limp bodies upright. All except one, a terrified, shaking, masked assassin.

  The creature hadn't appeared to move from his spot, but his hand was facing the sky, and his fingers encircling the palm a crown. The one surviving Crier scrambled to his feet and started to retreat.

  "I thought I said NO MOVING!"

  It spun and lifted his hand again, following the direction of the masked assassin. A series of thin red spikes shot up from the ground, one after the other, until one spike caught the fleeing Crier in the foot sending him falling forward.

  “OPEN YOUR EYES!” The being bellowed.

  A white circle opened below the Crier, resembling an eye, and then, a red spike shot out from the eye on the ground and impaled the last Crier.

  What is this, Erik? More unknown magic like the white smoke? Fern said. His voice was shaky. We needed to run.

  Raine pulled harder at my shirt. This time, I grabbed Nanda to retreat.

  A cough rang out in the street, and a second surviving Crier was struggling to free his arm from one of the red spikes.

  “Another one? I’m getting rusty. Do you also think you can really run from ME? From IGI-IGI?"

  The creature’s clothes, ripples, and shifted. First, a large, open, pale eye appeared on one of the red patches on its chest. Then, another eye appeared on a patch on its shoulder. Then two more materialized on two other patches. Then five, ten, dozens—until the entire patchwork body suit became a tapestry of grotesque, twitching eyes. The white mask turned obsidian black. Every eye seemed to look everywhere at once, seeing everything, everyone.

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  The captured crier twisted their arm trying to rip their impaled arm free. When he realized it was useless, he looked directly at the Cathedral Mask and smiled.

  "Who said I was running? I was just the distraction."

  "A distraction for wh—"

  “Long live the Crier Rebellion! Keep moving forward!” the Crier yelled.

  “SILENCE,” The creature yelled and flicked its hand.

  A new red spike shot up from the ground like an arrow and pierced the Crier’s temple, sending blood splattering across the floor.

  Then, the man’s hands went limp, and a small metal tube fell to the ground and rolled towards the being.

  "You damn—“

  A fireball exploded and flames clawed up the creature only for him to absorb the flames, putting out the fire almost as quickly as it sprayed on him.

  “Damn mortals… I should put down ALL OF YOU!"

  The eyes swiveled around the street and the creature flung up his hand sending a red spike into the face of a young man who had simply been watching. The man’s body went lip, and a woman next to him screamed.

  Igi-igi roared and thrashed.

  “SILENCE I SAID SILENCE!” He turned towards the woman and aimed his hand at her. The creature swatted his hand, sending another red spike up from an opening on the ground, impaling the woman in her chest. She too, went limp and passed.

  "I told you all to NOT MOVE!" The monster yelled and lifted his hands, and below him, eyes started opening up on the ground, as if he was casting a spell to transform the stones below.

  "Go now! RUN!" A voice yelled from behind. I turned around and saw the father, whom I had let through earlier, standing at the far end of the alley. He waved his hand. “Run and don’t look down!”

  Raine jerked me back hard this third time, and this third time I brought Nanda with us. We turned around and we sprinted following the father. Behind us, a crowd of fleeing people followed, getting stuck running over each other. It was like a school of fish fleeing a shark through a narrow channel. Crying and screaming erupted behind them.

  “I think we should listen to the man,” Nanda said behind me as we ran. “Don’t look down.”

  As I turned to answer Nanda, I saw, in my peripheral vision, dozens of eyes crawling up the alley and covering the stone ground. I turned back around and avoided looking at my feet, but below me, out of the corner of my eye, there was no street, just hundreds of freakish eyes staring.

  "LOOK AT ME!" Igi-igi's voice erupted from below. "LOOK AT ME!"

  I kept my gaze locked on the father's back as we ran through the alley. Nanda caught up with me and behind, I heard the panting of several people running for their lives. Then, I heard the stumble of someone falling, and then a scream. Blood sprayed past my shoulder. Ahead, a man had sprinted past us, but as he did, he lost his footing for a moment, causing him to instinctively glanced down. As he his eyes met the eyes on the ground a crimson spike burst through his chest. The father swerved around the impaled corpse, and waved us to follow him down a different alleyway.

  Despite the warnings, more fell behind us. Each scream followed the same pattern: a gasp, a wet puncture, and silence. They had all accidentally looked down, meeting the eyes on the ground, sentencing themselves to an early grave.

  We dodged past more bodies. Igi-igi’s eyes had spread all across the neighborhood, and even people who hadn’t been by the main street, where he had started the massacre, were getting caught up in the bloodlust. Quickly, the smell of fish guts and piss was coated with a more potent smell. The sharp coppery scent of fresh blood.

  “This way!” The father veered into a smaller alley, and we followed.

  "Wait! Help me!"

  I turned instinctively. Two women struggled to squeeze past an impaled body blocking the alley entrance.

  I reached out.

  “Here! Take my—” Blood sprayed over my face.

  The first woman had looked down, and a thin red spike shot up, narrowly missing my palm before punching through her skull. Her companion screamed, reached up, grabbed her head, and began tugging at her hair in sobs.

  “Come quickly! Before it’s—” I tried to grab the second woman.

  “No!” She cried and then slowly lowered her head.

  I gasped. “Wait!” I shouted. It was uselss. She opened her eye and a red spike pierced her forehead. Another death.

  My hand trembled, blood running through my fingers. Which woman’s blood, I couldn't tell.

  "Come Brother! Come!” Nanda yanked me away.

  "Don't look down, don't look down!" The father chanted over and over like a prayer. His children must have gone ahead because they did not run with us or him.

  I fought every instinct that told me to look down and watch where I stepped. The eyes followed beneath us—I could feel them spreading across the ground like oil, hear them blinking wetly in unison.

  "LOOK AT ME!" Igi-igi howled again. His voice echoed over the area, but was quickly muffled by the continuing screams.

  "Almost there…here!” The father threw open a green door, and we dove through. He slammed it shut, and the screams died. Then, silence.

  The eyes hadn't followed us inside, but I kept my gaze on the wooden ceiling, anyway. Without looking down, I could make out that we were in a small home with a simple kitchen table, chairs, and a pot bubbling over a low flame. Some stairs butted up against the far wall and led to a second floor.

  We all breathed heavily, catching our breath after the sprint for survival. Raine leaned against the wall, her chest heaving, and her eyes were wide with barely contained panic. Nanda had his eyes closed and paced in a figure eight, breathing through his nose in measured counts, trying to center himself.

  "What kind of demon was that?" he muttered.

  We were all covered with sprays of blood—from how many people, I couldn't count.

  Outside, the screaming slowly faded to nothing.

  The father stood with his back against the door while his children—the girl and the boy with the eye-patch—ran up to him from their hiding spot and buried their faces in his tunic.

  "Is everyone okay?" he asked me.

  "Yeah, I think so." I checked my team. "Raine? Nanda?"

  Raine caught me looking at her frightened expression and forcibly composed herself. "I'm fine," she said flatly, and pulled out her notebook and began writing furiously.

  "Nanda?"

  He stopped walking and opened his eyes. “Yes Brother Erik. Thank you.” His blue Veclan eyes were almost sparkling right now. It was a sign that he had used his races gift to see the aura of magic in people. “But Brother, that thing's magic... it was stronger than the Guardians. Stronger than the ones who assaulted the Academy.”

  I rubbed my chin. “Shit. Really?”

  Nanda nodded grimly. "He might be as strong as the twin-soul that controls your brother’s body.”

  "Shit. We need to warn everyone. Raine was right this was idiotic. We need to go. We can’t let anyone of our friends come up here."

  “Forgemen,” Raine interrupted. I looked over at her and she nodded her head at the other side of the room.

  The father was staring at us, with a look of suspicion shifting over his face. His daughter tugged his sleeve.

  "Daddy, why did you help the guards? We hate them."

  "They aren't guards," he said slowly. "Go upstairs, both of you."

  "But—"

  "Now!"

  They scurried up. The boy with the eye-patch paused, studying me intently before disappearing.

  The father gestured to the kitchen table. "Sit."

  I hesitated.

  "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone... yet." He pulled out a chair. "But that depends entirely on what you tell me."

  I gulped and sat down.

  “I can explain,” I began.