It felt like a long time had passed since he entered the House of Night.
Regardless, Kai was quite sure that it wasn't like this.
He could feel it the moment his consciousness slipped from the waking world and settled into the ending world that something was wrong. Slowly, he rose to his feet—his body weightless yet grounded.
And then, he looked around to see nothing.
Nothing to see at all.
From the start, the House of Night was already pretty empty, but this was way worse.
Every time he turned his head—all he saw was absolute darkness. It pressed hard against his eyes like a thick physical shroud. No distant stars above. No pale shimmer of the moon's light filtering through the endless black.
It was as if the House of Night had been swallowed whole.
Devoured by a darkness so deep that even Kai couldn't see through it.
"What in the Gods' name? What happened here?"
For a long, disorienting moment, Kai wondered if he had entered the wrong way.
