Smoke left its mark everywhere in the room and, despite the shattered glass that once made up the window, there wasn’t nearly enough air for Magic to breathe. Not even on the floor, where Mira had dragged him to after the pop of the pipes and the roar of the flames forced the two of them to their knees.

Magic’s nerves buzzed and snapped like the crackling embers of the wood from the walls.

His head swam. Nothing felt real.

Except the pain.

Everything burned when he breathed, whenever he dared take a breath through his nose or mouth. Like being seared from the inside out. The skin crawling sensation magnified—it had been there before, during the struggle with the Cardinal—but now his skin felt like there was a horde of bugs just waiting to breach the barrier, pierce flesh and scatter.

He could feel it everywhere on his body despite the coverage of his clothes and it made his head spin. Vertigo seized him and the room, loud and ringing in his ears, tilted beneath his knees. Nausea rumbled his stomach like a wave and brought contractions he couldn’t do anything to stop.

A muddled noise shrieked, but Magic couldn’t hear it. His focus was on the near burning sensation of his skin, the searing heat of it that scorched his mouth when it opened and settled in his lungs when he breathed. It was everywhere. His face, neck, shoulders. Hands. Parts of his ankles and legs where the jeans had been ripped. What he thought was remnants of ash settled on his skin.

Pain combined with panic elicited a high-pitched howl from his mouth, guttural and animal sounding. There was a shushing noise off to Magic’s right, a staccato rhythm like the beating of a heart. It wasn’t his, though. His heart was smacking against his ribs with all the urgency of an escape.

It hadn’t taken long for the inn’s alarms to go off and signal for help to put out the fire.

And the sound, shrieking, shrill, and sharp, activated something he’d forgotten existed in the dark, dusty shelves of his brain. Packed away like a moving box. Stored away with the intent to be forgotten. Except it wasn’t forgotten, not truly. Just avoided. It was hooked back to the forefront as smoke filled the air, his nerves still buzzing from the fight, from the sensation of something covering his mouth and now the caterwauling sirens that made his heart stutter and his body numb.

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He saw it then. A plume of dark blossoming over the horizon like a wave, first far, distant. Then, in a blink, everywhere, oppressive. Smothering.

Everything in Magic desired to run. He’d tried. But something—or rather someone—kept an iron grip on his coat, on his hand. The simple touch sent his frenzied nerves into overdrive and even with the flames eating everything alive and the cracking of wood from the ceiling and the paneling and the dressers he didn’t quite know where he could run to. Just that he had to.

Again the tug on his wrist when he stood up and nearly charged towards the flames in a desperate attempt to flee. He tripped over his own feet, combined with the force dragging him to the ground, and hit the floor hard, but it still didn’t calm anything, didn’t make the primal need to flee any better.

Beneath him, the earth pounded with the force of a thousand horses.

Something flitted in his vision. A variety of colors. White. Black. Tan. What he thought was a cloud of dirt swept in his direction and he resisted the urge to vomit a second time.

His chest heaved as his lungs struggled for air. Reflexively, he curled into a ball, guarding himself. His fingers found flesh just above the old wrappings on his palms and sank in. “Stop!”

“It’s okay!” cried a voice that he couldn’t quite place with the ringing in his head. “It’s not real! We have to go!”

Magic couldn’t breathe. Stars, his ribs ached just trying to. “Help me,” he gasped.

“Stay with me, Magic,” said the voice again, but it was struggling, desperate for oxygen. “It isn’t real!”

“Make them stop!”

“It’s not—it isn’t real! Come back, Mags; we have to go!”

And Magic tried. Truly, he tried.

But the voice, for all its pleading, was wrong.

Because the torment did not stop. Not when he closed his eyes. Not when he sank his nails into his skin to force himself out of the visions.

Because eventually the voice stopped talking, faded away into nothing.

Because eventually so did Magic, watching the last bits of orange light vanish behind a layer of smoke as the sound of footsteps, light and graceful, bounded through the room and skidded to a stop beside him.

A cold thread swept across his forehead and temples before dragging him down into the dark.