The monster lunged for Arin's heart.
Mira moved before she could think.
She threw herself between them.
The claws tore across her shoulder instead of Arin's chest. Pain exploded through her body as she hit the stone floor.
"MIRA!"
Arin's human voice came out raw and broken.
For one second, both his eyes were normal.
Then the darkness inside him screamed and took over again.
The chamber shook.
Kael forced himself upright, blood dripping from his side.
"Her pain is feeding it!" he shouted.
The monster smiled, Mira's mother's face stretching across its chest.
"Yes."
Its body began growing again.
Wounds closed.
Shadows thickened.
Every drop of Mira's fear made it stronger.
Mira gritted her teeth and pressed a hand over her bleeding shoulder.
"No more fear."
She stood.
The creature paused.
Kael stared at her. "What are you doing?"
She picked up the silver knife.
"You said it feeds on pain."
She looked directly at the monster.
"Then I'll give it nothing."
The many faces on the creature twisted in anger.
It rushed her.
Mira did not run.
At the last second she stepped forward and drove the silver knife deep into the face wearing her mother's form.
The chamber erupted with a scream so loud blood ran from everyone's ears.
The mother's face shattered like glass.
The creature staggered backward, shrinking violently again.
Kael laughed through the pain.
"That was its strongest illusion."
But Arin collapsed to both knees.
Black smoke poured from his mouth.
Every stab to the monster hurt him too.
Mira rushed to him.
His skin was ice cold.
"Arin, stay with me."
He opened his eyes weakly.
"Why… do you keep saving me?"
She almost answered—
But the floor beneath Kael split open.
A chain of black hands burst upward and dragged him screaming into the crack.
"KAEL!"
He slammed his blade into the stone edge, stopping himself halfway.
"Don't help me!" he shouted. "Finish it!"
The creature rose again, now smaller than before but far faster. Its body condensed into a sharp, human-sized form of pure darkness.
It looked exactly like Arin.
"I am what survives," it said.
Then it sprinted toward Mira with impossible speed.
Arin grabbed her wrist and pulled her down just in time. The shadow form passed overhead and sliced through a pillar behind them like paper.
Arin coughed blood.
His voice doubled again.
"We can't both live."
Mira's breath stopped.
"What?"
He looked at the silver knife in her hand.
"If it dies… I die."
The shadow Arin stood atop the rubble, smiling.
"If he dies… I become whole elsewhere."
Kael, still hanging over the crack, shouted the words none of them wanted to hear:
"There's a third choice!"
Everyone turned.
Kael's face was pale with terror.
"Open the black door again."
Silence.
Mira whispered, "Why?"
Kael looked at Arin.
"Because only what lives beyond it can kill both of them."
Behind them—
The sealed black door began knocking from the other side.
Three slow knocks.
Then a child's voice spoke through the metal.
"Arin… let me in."
To Be Continued…