It takes us about twenty minutes to reach the end of the tunnel. Every time the claustrophobia starts to close in on me I just lean into Chase and close my eyes, letting him lead me forward and trusting him to not let me crash into a wall. The rest of the way through seems much shorter than the beginning, and before I know it we're in the Catacombs of Paris. The tour guide talks and talks in French about the history of the place, but almost no one is really paying attention. The real star of the show is the bones.

The walls are covered in them. Femurs, pelvises, ribs, and skulls adorn the walls like the regular brick-and-mortar of an old building. The empty eye sockets seem to stare up at us, the gaping darkness giving the impression of being spied on through the gaps. And they're everywhere. There is hardly a gap where the tarnished white of bone doesn't peek through other bones. There is even a giant pillar in one of the chambers that is completely made of them, the center a bit thicker than the rest, making it resemble a grotesque beehive. When I stop to imagine the sheer amount of deceased humans in the room I shiver involuntarily. There must be millions of them, all arranged on different walls in these tunnels as peculiar mosaics tourists come to gawk at and take pictures. It gives you a sense of unrest, as if perhaps their souls have not yet moved on.

Briefly I remember the words to the riddle: They were carried in boxes, in bags, and in carts
And arranged in great patterns, a macabre art
By workers bent over, their fingers so deft
Assuming so blindly souls already left. . . I shiver again and continue on my way, still tense and sticking close to Chase. At least I know that if any mobile skeleton people show up, I'll be right next to the guy that can blow their skulls apart with lightning. Yeah right. But still, I feel much safer by him than by myself.

As we pass through dozens of skull filled corridors I begin to grow more and more restless. I want to be out of here. Usually I'd just blow it off as superstition and laugh at myself, but after seeing a red headed teenager turn into a giant cat, the concept of skeletons coming to life doesn't seem all that far fetched.

We reach the heart made of bones about half an hour into the tour. Made out of fourteen weathered skulls in total, it protrudes from the wall like a prehistoric decoration placed there by some deranged caveman. The irony of love made out of death is not lost on me. Goosebumps prick up and down my arms as I stare at the skinless faces. The fact that none of them have jaws just makes them look like their grimacing at us. It's definitely disconcerting.

"You know," Nate says from my right. "They say that, at night, people living on properties above the catacombs hear strange noises coming from beneath them. The sounds of moans and screams and people calling out for dead loved ones. They say that the people who went down to investigate never came back, but that the screams were worse the night after-"

"Pfft!" I scoff, turning away with a flip of my hair. "What are you, seven? I'm not stupid."

"I'm fifteen, thank you very much," he scolds with a smile. I am a bit surprised. He looks much older, seventeen at least.

"Well, you certainly act much younger if you're trying to scare me with ghost stories."

His expression immediately becomes serious. "Who ever said I was lying?"

Suddenly I feel something drag up my back with exaggerated slowness. All of my superstitions catch up to me at once and I let out a yelp, jumping away with my heart racing.

Nate bursts into laughter, keeling over with his hands on his sides. I turn to see a small oval-shaped rock fall to the ground just where I was standing. Damn. I thought for sure I was being attacked by an animated corpse.

Okay," Joshua starts, calling us over to the far corner of the room. "In order for this to work, we're going to have to create the veil mirage at the same time we cause ourselves to disappear. The veil people will act like us for an hour, which will give us time to get in and out of the chamber. Chase, Nate, come here." The two boys walk over, the younger stifling his laughter and becoming somber.

"How much energy will this use?" Chase asks. "We can't be too tired or the trial will be that much harder."

"Admittedly, the veil people do take quite a toll on your energy supply, so I'll make five, Chase will make four, and Nate will make three." Joshua begins the instruction, using plenty of words I don't know and a lot of weird technical terms that they seem to understand perfectly.

"So, what is a veil person?" I ask, walking over to Morgan.

"Oh! A veil person is an exact copy of a person made by a Mage, she says. "The mirage looks exactly the same as the original, but they're like golems. They have no will or even consciousness, and can't answer any direct questions. In other words, they're just empty shells. The difference is, they can fulfill simple missions as long as the caster specifies and provides more energy. But we're talking very rudimentary tasks. The more complicated, the more energy. In this case, our veil people just need to get out of the tunnel and leave the building before disappearing. It's perfectly doable for a mirage. And the caster can terminate the veil at any point necessary. Most are used as stand-ins, however, so that feature is largely useless. After all, how can you tell when to terminate it if you're somewhere else?"

"That makes sense," I muse. "But why aren't their more incidents with veil people being discovered around the world? I mean, it would be a weird experience if you ran into one on the street, right?"

"Well, that's the thing, it's a not a widely known technique. In fact, we didn't know about it until Joshua joined ten years ago. He brought a lot to our clan. Definitely more than you would expect just from looking at him."

I look over at the Asian man, bent over his wooden cane with his button-up checkered shirt and gray slacks. "No, you wouldn't. He looks just like someone's grandfather." My eyes wander over to Chase, absently admiring the way his long sleeve shirt clings to his torso. I look up to his face, studying the planes and angles. There's something about him that draws me in and makes me want to be closer, to get to know him. I really do. I close my eyes and smile. I like him, I realize. I like him a lot.

Just as I'm thinking this, Chase steps out of himself. It's hard to explain, but it's like he takes a step forward and his foot duplicates. Then his leg, then his torso, then his head, and last his other leg. A second later the first Chase suddenly vanishes and only the duplicate is left. I am left staring at the second Chase in awe, completely taken aback by the strange power.

Without thinking I step towards the shadow him, my hand extended as if to touch him. He's so. . . Still, in a way that Chase never is. Slowly his head turns to regard me in front of him. His beautiful chocolate brown eyes are completely empty, like mirrors with no refections. They are lifeless, dull, unfeeling orbs. I shiver and step back quickly, my hand dropping and my own eyes going wide.

"Chase!" I breath in horror.

"Haven," his voice whispers from beside me, making me jump. "It's okay, I'm right here."

I look over. Nothing. He's invisible. Dang. That's crazy. Something touches my arm tentatively. I reach out to feel his hand, his fingers feather-light against my skin. Carefully I take his hand, slowly moving up past his wrist and up his arm. I feel up to his shoulder and trail a little higher, my hand pressed against his jaw. And then, ever so lightly, I lift my hand to rest on the side of his face. The feeling is so strange, the sensation of touching flesh I can't see. But if I close my eyes it's like he's right there in front of me. I can feel his smooth skin, sense the heat of his body, hear the slightly increased pace of his breaths.

He moves, leaning in with his hands on my shoulders. My own breathing increases pace in time with his. "Do you trust me?" He asks. I am immediately taken back to the time my father said this, right before my world went to Hell. I shudder, but nod anyway. I feel him touch my hair as he presses his forehead against mine. I close my eyes, keeping my hand on his face.

There is a tearing sound, like the rending of fabric. Every single cell in my body lights up and becomes hyper aware, my whole being like a live wire. My cells are split and duplicated, mitosis at a supersonic pace. My skin feels as if it's being stretched, torn, and ripped apart like so much play dough. I open my mouth and let out a gasp. . . And then it's all over. I collapse to the floor, breathing hard, shocked into silence.

It takes me a moment to look up, but when I do what I see shocks me to the core. I am sitting at the feet of Haven, an exact replica of myself in every way. My hair is the same light brown, waving down to my elbow. My face has the same round shape and tan skin. My height is still the same; short as Mickey Mouse. My eyes are just as startling green as well. But, like Chase's duplicate, there is nothing behind them, no life. Like a shadow of a person. A veil person. How fitting.

"Haven? Haven? Look at me," Chase says. I turn to look at in his direction, expecting to just see air, but instead I can actually see him. And that means. . . He turned me invisible too? I look down at myself, but I'm still there. Huh?

"Hey," Chase says, sitting on the ground beside me. "Are you doing okay? Don't worry, we're both invisible. They can't see us."

"But. . . He can we see us?" I ask, confused.

"It's electromagnetic interference. We don't fully understand it, but it has to to with light waves. We are here, but the light that reflects the pigment that makes up what you can see is blocked by a wall of energy and magic. You can see through it because you are behind it too." He speaks about science and magic in combinations that are almost oxymoronic.

"Okay," I tell him, sort of understanding the concept. "But the veil people are really creepy. Like clones."

He nods. "Yeah, I think so too. But they're harmless. They can only do what we want them to."

His face seems strained, like he just did something that required a great deal of effort. "Are you okay?" I ask in concern., putting my hand on his arm. "You look. . . Tired."

He smiles slightly, covering my hand with his own. "I'm okay. It's just casting fatigue. I'll be fine."

I start to stand, noticing all of the veil people around the room. The rest of the tour is just out of sight around the corner, giving us the right amount of cover. I grab Chase's hand fearlessly and stand up, towing him along. "Okay," I say. "Let's get this trial thing out of the way so we can save the world."

He smiles at me and I give him a tiny one of my own. A real one. He nods, studying my face for a moment before turning and leading me back towards the others, who stand next to the heart of skulls.

"Okay," Garret says, "send off the veil people, we need to get started."

Joshua gives him a nod and waves his hand in the direction of our duplicates, not even taking his eyes off the heart of bone. The veils snap to attention, moving smoothly in the direction of the tour like regular people. I shiver and turn back towards Garret.

He stands on his toes, lifting his face up to the leftmost skull that makes up the heart. Putting his eye it's empty eye socket he says carefully, "my courage surpasses empires," before stepping back quickly. We wait in tense silence for a second, then two, then three, then four, all hoping that it worked. My hands clench into fists at my sides. It will work. It has to.

Suddenly there is a hiss of air being released, followed by a low rumbling sound. I jump back as the wall of bones suddenly pulls inwards, moving back about a foot. Dust billows up in clouds around us as the wall begins to slide to the left like the motion sensitive doors they have at supermarkets. Slowly the bones recede, revealing a gaping black opening just behind it. It's the chamber that the riddle mentioned. The one we might soon call home, according to it. This is the beginning of the trail, the ending of a story which began eight hundred years ago. And we're about to take it on.

Wordlessly, the eleven of us step into the void, our hands shaking and our faces expectant. There is about five feet of lighted passage before it fades away to impenetrable darkness. As the last one of us steps across the threshold, the grinding sound returns and the wall slides slowly back in place. I watch the sliver of light omitted by the door get smaller and smaller with a kind of resigned fear. And finally, with a resonating crashing sound, the doorway hits the opposite frame. We are left in complete and utter darkness, not able to see our hands in front of our faces. I feel suffocated again and I clutch Chase's sleeve a little tighter. But there is no turning back now. And I don't regret it. Even when I start to feel light headed, even when my eyes close, even when I feel the cool stone floor against the side of my face as I loose consciousness, I don't regret it. Whether we are ready for it or not, this is the first trial of Samuel Green.