The portal spat us out onto ash.
Not dirt. Not soil. Just gray ash that puffed up with each step, coating our feet in the residue of something burned beyond recognition.
I stumbled, nearly dropping Astro. Kael caught my arm, steadying me, and fresh blood bloomed where his fingers touched my skin.
He pulled back with a hiss but didn't let go completely. Just adjusted his grip to minimize contact.
"Where are we?" one of the freed wolves whispered.
I looked around, and my breath caught.
A forest. But wrong. So wrong.
The trees were made of bone. Not metaphorically. Actual bones, bleached white and twisted together into shapes that vaguely resembled trees. Vertebrae stacked to form trunks. Ribs spreading out like branches. Finger bones creating leaves that clattered in a wind I couldn't feel.
And embedded in the bone-trunks, faces.
Wolf faces. Human faces. Dozens of them pressed into the white surface like they'd tried to escape and gotten trapped halfway through.
