Selena awoke with a rasping breath.
The air was thick—cloying, sulfuric, and heavy enough to crush her lungs from the inside.
Her limbs felt limp, her head a fog of pain and residual poison.
Her vision blurred, but even so, she knew this wasn't the palace. It wasn't any place she had ever seen.
She was sitting—no, dropped—on polished obsidian.
A massive circular chamber loomed around her, carved from black volcanic stone and veined with glowing cracks of red.
Lava pulsed somewhere below, casting hellish light upward, and from above, there was nothing—only darkness.
A void that stared back.
Five thrones stood before her. Each one was grotesque, monumental, and entirely wrong.
She didn't know who they were, but she was sure they were powerful—more than she could handle.
She didn't know how right she was, as the ones before her were the Five Eyes of the Deep.
All of them were general-class demons.
Her breath caught in her throat merely because they were watching her.
