Caspian led the way up the ravine, then through a couple of narrow passages that took us to another gorge. I stayed by his side, followed closely by Hansa and Caia, while Jax and Blaze held the daemon at the back.

The rain had stopped, and the ground was mushy beneath us, slathering our boots in mud as we snuck deeper into the Valley of Screams. Two hours passed as we occasionally hid behind large rocks and in tight crevices—I’d become quite adept at noticing the air ripple across larger distances with my True Sight, to the point where I could detect daemon movement before they got close enough to spot us.

“It’s here,” Caspian whispered as we made a sharp turn to the left upon exiting the third passage. The gorge stretching both ways was quite narrow and barren, riddled with sharp stones and yellow-colored shrubs.

There was a cave opening in the limestone wall on our left, not easy to spot with all the boulders partially blocking the entrance. From certain angles, one could pass by and not even notice it. We followed Caspian inside, moving through a dark tunnel that went on for about three hundred yards before it hit a… dead end.

“Are you sure we’re on the right path?” I muttered, frowning at the sight of the stone wall.

“Look beyond.” He gave me a sideways glance, the corner of his mouth twitching. I used my True Sight, and, what do you know, the tunnel kept going at a lower angle, deep underground.

“Okay, what now?” I raised my eyebrows. Caspian nodded at our daemon.

“Bring that sack of meat over here,” he replied bluntly, and I let out a brief chuckle.

“Ooh, didn’t know you had that sass in you!” I quipped, and he responded with a slyly raised eyebrow before taking hold of the daemon, who was still squirming and growling against his restraints.

Caspian took a small knife out of his belt and cut across the daemon’s shoulder, drawing blood. The fiend hissed, and found himself pushed into the wall. The cloaking spell instantly reacted, and the limestone surface rippled.

“After you.” Caspian smirked and bowed curtly.

I grinned as I stepped through the wall, the cool stone tickling my face with liquid motion. The rest of my team followed, dragging the daemon along with them. Caspian then grabbed the fiend and pushed him into a corner, slitting his throat with one swift move.

I gasped. He held the daemon in place, pressing a forearm into his chest as blood gushed from the gash across his throat. The creature gurgled and choked until the light in his eyes went out. Caspian pulled himself back, and the daemon slumped on the floor behind a couple of rocks.

“We couldn’t risk him getting loose, and we don’t need him down there,” Caspian said, noticing my furrowed brow.

“No, it’s fine. It makes sense.” I shrugged. There was no issue with Caspian killing a daemon—even though this one had been restrained and could not harm us in any way. I was just surprised by the speed with which he made that decision, and the swiftness with which he executed it. Caspian had the cold blood of a killer if needed, and I knew it was in the best interest of our group.

“Let’s go,” he breathed, and went ahead.

One by one we descended after him. The tunnel got narrower every hundred yards, until we had to crouch in order to pass through it. Once we reached the exit, we followed him across a small plateau and hid behind the large rocks on the edge. It was secluded enough to keep us concealed as we took in our surroundings.

I held my breath as I looked up—a massive dome ceiling stretched for tens of square miles, with thick pillars pouring down into the city to support its titanic weight. The daemon city below sprawled across the cave floor—riddled with square houses and buildings, made entirely out of black stone with obsidian reflexes. Orange fires burned in massive copper bowls at street junctions and in iron and glass boxes mounted on almost every wall.

The sight before me resembled a painting of a Renaissance inferno I’d seen in a museum back on Earth, with deep and dramatic contrasts of black and amber, of light and dark, and of sharp and soft forms in a terrifying display of what could easily be described as hell. Slim, pointy towers poked out from the sea of buildings, and thin streams of freaking lava poured through the city, crossed by a multitude of bridges.

It was hot all over, like a midsummer’s day, dry enough to make me lick my lips every other minute because I was suddenly feeling all crusty and about to crumble. The center of the city was rich in immense buildings with tall columns and foundations, the latter linked to the black stone pavement through broad stairs. Farther outward, the buildings began to shrink, while the outskirts were occupied by small houses and modest huts.

Thousands of daemons roamed through the streets, and even they varied in size depending on their proximity to the city center. The rich, big, and strong ones lived in the middle of this massive settlement, while the weaklings were cast off to the sides.

Survival of the fittest, I guess…

“Keep your heads down,” Caspian hissed, and pulled me back under the shade of our rocky cover. We all huddled closer together.

My heart stopped, and ice tumbled through my veins at the sound of a gut-wrenching shriek. I looked up and saw giant black bat-like creatures flying overhead. There were three of them, gliding in tandem as they took a tight turn and resumed their survey of the city.

“Those are Death Claws,” Caspian breathed, watching them fly away.

They were scary as hell, with long, skinny legs and large wings that also served as arms. Each wing ended in a large claw, which explained why they were called Death Claws—those things were just a fraction of Blaze’s dragon size, but they looked perfectly capable of tearing any one of us non-dragons to shreds, if given the chance.

I resumed my quiet study of the city beyond the edge of our little hiding place. Some of the daemons were riding pit wolves with charmed iron collars, and others used transportation methods akin to rickshaws maneuvered by weaker, skinnier daemons. There were elites, there were military grunts, there were portly overlords, and there were poor, subjugated daemons. There was a hierarchy, and it sort of put this dark world into perspective.

They had rules and customs, just like the Maras. They lived underground, and they certainly liked it hot. They ate souls and used swamp witch magic. Our problem on Neraka was far more complex than it had seemed at first, and the closer we got to its center, the more layers we discovered as we kept peeling away at it.

“This place is called Black Tower,” Caspian whispered, “mainly because of that big one in the middle.”

I looked out into the distance and noticed the structure he was talking about. At the very center of the city, a giant tower rose above all the others, thick and round, with a palace serving as a base. The palace was a square construction, each side stretching for half a mile, and was lit up by thousands of little orange flames. It was beautiful and creepy at the same time, and it filled me with dread.

Suddenly, dealing with a handful of invisible hunter daemons seemed like a walk in the park, compared to the fresh hell unraveling in this underground city. My stomach turned into a painful little peanut at the sight of Imen, about a dozen of them, being dragged across one of the lava bridges in cages pulled by pit wolves. They were all females, all young and defenseless. Two daemons snapped their whips at the pit wolves to get them to move faster.

I instinctively moved to help them, but Caspian caught my wrist and pulled me back.

“Don’t! We can’t risk detection at this point,” he murmured.

Glancing to our side, I noticed Hansa, Jax, and even Caia and Blaze nodding, though they weren’t happy with that decision either.

“He’s right, Harper,” Hansa whispered. “There’s much more at stake than those Imen girls…”

“So, what, we just let them carry them off so daemons can literally suck the life out of them?” My blood simmered, but deep down, I knew they were right. It just made me feel absolutely miserable.

“This is an evil, violent, and turbulent world, Miss Hellswan,” Caspian replied. “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, and you know it.”

I cursed under my breath and gave him a brief, sullen nod in response. Heavy growls sent shivers down my spine, and I looked over the edge again—giant daemons sauntered across another bridge not far from us, pushing the smaller, weaker fiends to the side.

“They’re freaking huge,” I gasped, my eyes nearly popping out of their orbits as I took in their incredible size. They were twice as big as the daemons we’d encountered before, with double the muscle mass and thick, burly arms and necks. “I bet it would take five or six of us just to tackle one and maybe live to see another day…”

“Which is why we need to keep a low profile.” Caspian pulled me back again, his grip firm on my right arm. “We need to get to the other side of the city. There’s someone there who can help with the information you need to prepare a campaign against the daemons.”

“Why won’t you spare us the trouble of trekking through a damn daemon city and give us the information yourself?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Because I took an oath of silence on these matters,” he finally relented with a deep sigh. He looked at all of us, and shook his head slowly. “You wouldn’t understand, but I’ll try to explain anyway. As an Exiled Mara and the heir to House Kifo, I take my oaths very seriously, even when everything in my body and conscience tell me otherwise. I swore to keep certain things secret until the right time comes along for me to speak up, but it won’t stop me from taking you to see someone who can tell you what I can’t. It is the best I can offer, at this point in time.”

“How will we get across to the other side of the city, then, given the variety of fiends waiting for us down there?” Blaze frowned.

Caspian pointed at a narrow set of stairs just twenty yards to the right, carved into the wall. They led somewhere below, and were bordered by large, sharp chunks of obsidian.

“We’ll go around,” he replied. “There are several routes that the daemons barely use in these parts of town. They’re narrow enough for us to slip through and kill any fiend we might come across without causing a stir. It’ll take us farther to the other side, where we can sneak between huts, undetected.”

I braced myself for what came next. My heartrate increased as Caspian took my hand and guided me toward the stairs. The others followed quietly, but I could feel the tension mounting as we descended. The closer we got to the daemons, the harder it was to breathe.

Whatever came next, we had to pull through. Caspian’s hold on me helped a little, soothing some of my frayed nerves; it was enough for me to focus and use my True Sight along the way, looking out for daemons who might get too close and see us through the obsidian gaps. Down here, nobody bothered to hide.

Down here, the daemons could be themselves, and we were the ones hiding.

Oh, how the roles have changed…