The day after Dante's storm found its anchor, Selena woke to find she was no longer alone.
The ash around their small camp had transformed overnight into shapes that were almost human—vague forms sculpted from gray matter, featureless but undeniably present. Dozens of them, standing in a circle around where she and Dante slept, silent and waiting. As Selena sat up, flames instinctively flickering to life around her hands, the shapes shifted, becoming slightly more defined.
They were the shades. The ones she carried in her fire, the fragments of consciousness that had been consumed by the marrow and were now seeking form in the realm of ash.
"What's happening?" Dante asked, awake immediately, his hand moving to where his weapon would have been if they still carried such things.
