I am the last to arrive.

When I arrive at the Wicham, the two-story Bauhaus-inspired building is lit with small orbs leading up to the multi-story glass doors. A small sign glitters with the words "Wicham," with a conical hat hanging off the "W."

I scamper across the creme-colored marble floors past the offices and the showroom floor. Down a flight of steps, I find myself in the basement surrounded by covered artifacts from Erised's many adventures. The basement is spotless and dustless, its black stone as pristine as the day it was laid.

The others are gathered around a black Ming vase with black golden spirals that almost look like long, magnificent cracks. Their hands cover a small portion of the vase. I join them by placing my fingertips over a pronounced spiral on the vase.

"Is that everyone? Good, let's go." Erised announces.

She places her well-manicured purple fingernails across the mouth of the vase, and the gold spirals illuminate, drowning out the darkness in the room. The world swirls around us, twisting and contorting so much that I can barely stand it. When my stomach rises to my throat, it stops, and we are standing in the middle of an endless desert called the Untamed.

Endless is a stretch. There are mountains in the distance.

When the Awakening happened and the world was terraformed by convergence, this area was left barren of life yet full of rich history. Most people who habitat Midas stay far away from the Untamed, opting to live on the coast.

Erised moves her long, thick braids behind her back as she pulls her hands out in front of her. In a tank top and pair of shorts, she effortlessly waves her brown hands around in circles until a spark of blue energy pierces the air around her.

The wind whips across the desert, filling my hair, mouth, and eyes with sand. I spit sand out as the sweltering heat creates droplets of sweat along my brow.

"Stay together. When we're inside, I'll set up the perimeter. Stay within the perimeter. If you find something, alert me immediately." Erised says.

Her green eyes bounce between us as we nod in agreement.

Tremors shake the world underneath us. The Earth opens up beneath us, sliding away to reveal a flight of stairs. Erised moves down into the darkness first, a ball of light hovering above her palm. Small orbs of light shoot from the orb hovering above her palm and land on the steps after her.

"Yeah, stay close, newbies." Lansid Colwer says as he descends the stairs behind her.

As his silver-blonde head disappears down into the darkness, he is followed by Amaria Harisma, whose usually vibrant blue fairy wings are barely visible in the sun. The girl beside her, Esme Stonecraft, hesitates briefly before she disappears down into the darkness.

"It's not so scary if you hold your breath." Harper Braunwin says as he moves ahead of me.

As I take the first step down into the darkness, coolness swims up my spine, bursting into the rest of my body through my veins. I can almost hear the faint sounds, like scratching or whispering.

Get it together, Reyshard.

The orbs lead me down the stairs, almost two stories into the Earth. At the bottom of the stairs, orbs zoom around a room that is the size of a football field, illuminating the darkness. The light reveals a template, dilapidated and forgotten.

Two pools of water run parallel to each other on either end of the room, creating an incomplete square. In the center of the room, light shines down through the ceiling onto a lone, broken archway.

Above the main room is a second floor with doors all around the room. Bewitched, maybe?

"This temple was found six years ago. After the terraforming caused by the awakening, many pre-awakening locations were lost to time. This used to be a desert in what was called California." Erised explains. "This place is a Tibulet. A place of immense power."

"What kind of power?" Amaria asks.

Amaria tugs on her white tank top, her emerald eyes circling the room. Lansid moves beside her, slithering his arm around her shoulder. A swift elbow drives him away, his blue eyes burning with embarrassment.

"That's why we're here. You are all promising Histors. If we can unravel the secrets of this place, we could make a discovery unlike anything the world has seen." Erised says.

Esme raises her hand into the air. Her myriad of bangles clatters as she slowly waves her hand in the air. "Sorry, Erised, but are you saying we're the first ones here?"

"I was informed of this spot...unofficially," Erised says. "We could very well be the first here in centuries."

Esme's dark eyes gloss over, and her pale skin reddens. Her hand drops to her side as she clutches her right wrist.

"What about the doors?" Harper asks as he takes a hit from his inhaler. The round boy inhales deeply before pushing his glass off the tip of his nose. His eyes linger on a door on the second floor. "Where do they go? Are we sure everyone is gone?"

"The doors don't open. We've tried." Erised answers. "The walls are filled with runes and sigils older than anything we've seen. See if you can make sense of any of it. You have three hours starting...now."

With books in hand, the others scatter to different parts of the room. I, however, am entranced by the archway. The crumbling arch calls to me. Weird symbols cover the curve of the arch. It's as if I can almost make out the symbols, but something in my mind can't place them.

My mind is filled with voices, all speaking at the same time. I'm easily lost in them.

Erised places her hand on my shoulder. "Are you alright?" She asks.

Her words guide me back to the world, away from the voices. The voices stop. I blink the psychosis away.

Something is off about this place.

After two and a half hours of studying the walls, all I can decipher is that whoever wrote the runes is probably unstable. Book or no book, it feels like a bunch of jumbled symbols with no discernable pattern.

I'm not the only one. Lansid has been openly complaining about the temple's lack of continuity, much to the chagrin of the rest of us. He's neck-and-neck on the annoyance factor with Harper, whose allergies are about to kill him.

Esme and I move all the way across the room to get away from them. She is deciphering a rather nasty-looking rune when she stops. She places her hand on the rune and closes her eyes.

I would be confused if I didn't know her unique ability, clear touch or psychometry. She can see the history of an object by touching it. She claimed to have seen Amari Colderson's fall down a flight of stairs after touching his shoulder last year.

I'm not too sure about it.

"Anything?" I ask.

"No. Amazingly no," Esme pulls her hand away from the rune and sighs. "This whole place is...weird. There's something there, but my power is being blocked."

"Is that possible? Maybe something in here is dampening our magic."

"Maybe. This place gives me the creeps. It's definitely a magical place. I can feel the magic, but it's like it is...hiding. I don't know."

"Thirty minutes! Esme and Peri, don't wander too far." Erised calls.

"Two hours, and we're no closer to 'unraveling the secrets' of this temple than we were hours ago," Esme says as her eyes find my necklace. "Nice necklace."

My cheeks burn, adding to the sweat on my brow. Esme chuckles as she pulls out an identical necklace from her shirt. "The latest in overprotective sibling."

"And parent." I laugh.

"Maybe we should look somewhere else. I think this wall of runes is a bust." Esme places her hand on the wall to help her up. "Besides, it's hotter over here than any other place in here."

I place my hand on the rune beside hers and push myself to my feet. As I reach my feet, a clicking sound comes from behind the wall. The runes light as the wall becomes opaque. Our hands pass through the wall as we tumble through, swallowed by the darkness.

A crack echoes through the darkness. The hard impact of my back hitting the ground is broken by something brittle. Esme tumbles down on top of me, knocking the air out of me. I gasp for air as I roll onto my side.

"Peri?" Esme's voice comes through the darkness.

"Ow." I reply.

"Good, you're alive." A light bursts to life in the palm of her hand, illuminating the immediate area around us. "What just happened?"

I place my palm against the stone floor and watch as the light flares against her palm. The hair on the back of my neck stands. An intense heat on the side of my neck alarms me. It's the strange feeling of being watched.

Golden energy sparks against my palm as a burst of light flickers above my palm, illuminating the area along with Esme's. "A fall from grace?"

"You're really very funny, you know that?"

Esme waves her hand in the air, and the orb of light ascends above us, bathing the area in light. Large, intricate webs are spun, dangling from the ceiling. I am horrified when I realize I am lying beside a bed of bones. A skull lay staring up at me. The sounds of crunching fill the air as I rush to my feet. Esme joins me, her eyes wide as saucers.

"Are those...bones?" Esme asks.

"A lot of bones."

"Whose bones?"

"Does it matter?"

"Right." Esme lifts her hand to the orb, and it tilts slightly, casting light into the rest of the room. The room is shrouded in the same intricate, somehow beautiful spiderwebs. "I don't like that."

"Me either. We need to find a way out of here."

"Agreed."

The orb of light descends slightly, hovering slightly above us. My orb floats up beside it, bathing the room in even more light.

Esme guides us to the far side of the room. The shroud of webs extends from the far left wall to the ceiling above us. I swipe through the webbing. My hands stick to the web as if it were made out of glue. The harder I tug, the more resistance I encounter, almost as if something is moving against me.

"Incinde." Esme says pointing at the web. Fire covers the web, disintegrating it in a flash of flame. "You're welcome."

I take a step back, stumbling over something on the floor. A discarded book lies open, its pages drenched in dry blood.

My mind flashes back to the ball, to standing in front of my father's dying body, drenched in his blood. The world flashes between the present and the past as Esme moves past me to pick it up.

"Is this a mortal Bible?" Esme asks. "So cool! I've never seen a real one."

"What's a mortal Bible doing down here?"

Esme flips through the pages of the book. "How insane is it that wars were waged over this book. It's not even magical."

"Something isn't right. What just happened? When we touched the runes, we fell through the wall into this...what is this?"

"Death trap?"

"And why would the mortal Bible be down here? This is a magical place of power. What were humans doing here?" I ask.

The hair on the back of my neck stands as the realization washes over me. Magic often requires sacrifice. There are stories about darker covens sacrificing mortals to appease whatever deity they worship.

The bones, the mortal Bible, and the spiderwebs mean something.

"What? What is it?" Esme asks.

"Esme, don't move."

"But—"

I clasp my hand over her mouth. A low hiss comes from the ceiling. In the darkness, the faint outline of something hangs in the air. Esme's breathing quickens. A clear dissonance separates me from my body.

I am outside my body for a few seconds, watching as I lift my free hand to tilt the orb of light toward the ceiling. An Arachana the size of an automobile dangles in the air, watching us with hundreds of eyes.

My hand drops from Esme's mouth as I finally return to my body. The giant hairy arachnid gracefully drops to the floor with a soft thud as the pads of its legs hit the floor. Its hair legs raise in front, giving way to its long, sharp pincers coated with dripping venom.

"Ar—ar—arachana." Esme whispers.

I ignore her. My body tingles with numbness as my legs wobble underneath me. We're in a room with no doors. There is no way out.

"What are we going to do?" Esme asks.

"Die horribly."

"Not comforting."

The spider skitters towards us, and I pull Esme backward until we bump into something along the wall. A doorway that wasn't there pops into the wall beside us. Without any hesitation, I pull Esme through the door.

We tumble through the door and find ourselves on the temple's stone floor. Chittering echoes through the empty room as a hairy leg pokes through the door. I pull Esme to her feet and rush her to the stairs at the end of the hall, leading her down to the temple's main floor.

As we cross the middle of the room, the spider jumps from the ceiling onto the floor before us. It raises its legs, again displaying its pincers.

"Any ideas?" Esme asks.

"One." I jerk my hand forward, screaming, "Incinde!"

Fire streaks through the air and slams into it. The spider shrieks as it skitters past us to the pool of water.

"Peri? Esme?" Erised's voice calls.

"The entrance, go!"

Esme and I speed towards the entrance. As we climb the stairs, something wraps around my leg, tripping me. Pain invades my chin as I am swept off my feet and pulled to the foot of the stairs.

My head is spinning as I feel the tugging on my leg. The spindly webbing leads from my leg to the arachana's abdomen. I cry out, thrashing to get away as I am pulled across the stone floor.

"Peri!" Esme calls from the stairs. Footsteps accompany heavy breathing as she grabs my hand. "Hold on."

Esme pulls hard against the spider, but the size difference is too much.

My heart stops as the spider starts to move closer. Out of nowhere, a small ball of green light floats between the spider and us. Aisling grows to his normal height as he brings down a sword on the spiderweb.

The spider shrieks as it charges at us. My ears are filled with whispers. They're all saying the same thing. "Stop!" I shout.

A wave of energy propels through the air, washing over it. It freezes in mid-air. Aisling runs towards the spider, slides across the stone floor, and uses his sword to slice through the spider's abdomen.

Esme's hand tenses as blood drips down on my arm. Esme's arm has been cut open in the shuffle. She is bleeding profusely onto me.

My body seizes as the blood touches my skin. The acrid smell of the blood fills my nose as I let go of her hand.

"Peri?" Aisling's voice calls through my psychosis.

"Ais?"

Aisling's face appears above me. His beautiful eyes examine my face. "Are you okay?" He asks.

"I'm okay. Esme's bleeding."

"I'm fine." Esme says.

"It looks pretty bad," Aisling says. "We should get you to Med."

Aisling quickly helps me to my feet before sheathing his sword in the quiver attached to his back. "You sure you're good?"

"I'm fine. Let's get the Hell out of here."

Esme climbs the stairs first. Aisling and I follow her back to the rest of the group, who wait around the vase. Erised assaults us with questions before she spots the blood on Esme's arm.

"We're taking her to Med." Aisling says.

Erised bites her lip. "Once we're back, take her directly to the Med, Mr. Ardene. Lucky you were here."

We all grab the vase again. The blood drying on my arm catches me eye. It's the second time in two days I've had someone else's blood on me.