<h4>Chapter 168: Chapter 168: The New Enemy</h4>


    Emma copsed to her knees, blood pouring from her nose.


    "Something’sing!" she screamed, her golden eyes rolling back. "Something worse than the shadows!"


    Kael caught his daughter before she hit the ground. Around them, the battle with Matthews’s shadow soldiers had just ended. ra’s sacrifice had worked - she’d given up her wolf spirit to save the children’s souls. But now Emma was having another vision, and this one was different.


    This one was making her sick.


    "Emma, focus on my voice," Kael said desperately. His daughter’s body was shaking like she was freezing cold, but her skin burned hot against his hands.


    "Daddy," Emma whispered, her voice sounding far away. "I can see... I can see everything burning."


    "What’s burning?"


    "The whole world."


    Ronan and Darian rushed over, their faces still covered in dirt from the fight. ra stumbled behind them, weak from losing her wolf but alive.


    "What’s wrong with her?" Ronan demanded.


    "I don’t know," Kael said. "This is different from her normal visions."


    Emma’s eyes snapped open, but they weren’t golden anymore. They were silver, just like her mother’s used to be.


    "It’s noting from the future," Emma said in a voice that didn’t sound like hers. "It’sing from the past."


    "What do you mean?" ra asked weakly.


    "The First Hatred wasn’t the beginning. It was just the middle."


    Tobias, who had been checking on the twins, looked up sharply. "That’s impossible. The First Hatred was the source of all shadow creatures."


    Emma shook her head. "No. Something made the First Hatred. Something older. Something that’s been sleeping."


    She grabbed Kael’s shirt with tiny fists that were surprisingly strong.


    "Daddy, we woke it up. When we defeated Matthews, when we broke the shadow army... we woke up the thing that created them."


    Baby Marcus started crying from his corner of the bunker. But this wasn’t normal crying. With each sob, the air around him shimmered like heat waves.


    "The baby can feel it too," Jake said quietly. He was sitting with a group of rats who had helped in the battle. "The animals are scared. They say something big is moving under the ground."


    "Under the ground where?" Darian asked.


    Jake listened to the squeaking sounds. "Everywhere. All over the world."


    Lily was trying to heal a injured bird, but her power kept flickering. "I can’t make it work right," she said, frustrated. "Something’s blocking me."


    "It’s blocking all of us," Emma said, struggling to stand up. "The old thing doesn’t like our powers. It wants to eat them."


    Suddenly, the bunker started shaking. Not like an earthquake - like something huge was moving beneath them.


    "We need to get out of here," Tobias said urgently.


    "Where can we go?" ra asked. "If this thing is everywhere..."


    "There might be one ce," Emma said slowly. Her silver eyes were seeing something none of them could. "But we have to hurry. And we have to bring everyone."


    "Everyone who?"


    "Every supernatural being left alive. Every human who still believes in magic. Every child with powers."


    Kael stared at his daughter. "Emma, that’s thousands of people."


    "I know. But if we don’t gather them all together, the old thing will pick us off one by one."


    The shaking got worse. Cracks appeared in the walls, but instead of letting in dirt, they let in something else. A thick, oily darkness that seemed to move on its own.


    "It’sing up," Jake said, his eyes wide with terror. "The rats say it’sing up right now!"


    "What does it look like?" Ronan asked.


    Jake tilted his head, listening to voices only he could hear. Then his face went pale.


    "They can’t describe it. They say it’s too big to see all at once. But it has lots of mouths. And all of them are hungry."


    The darkness seeping through the cracks began to whisper. Not words, exactly, but sounds that made everyone’s skin crawl.


    Emma suddenly grabbed Kael’s hand. "Daddy, I need to tell you something important."


    "What is it?"


    "In my vision... when we gather everyone together to fight the old thing... some of the children don’t make it."


    Kael’s heart stopped. "Which children?"


    Emma’s eyes filled with tears. "I can’t tell yet. The vision keeps changing. But one of us... one of us has to go into the dark ce where the old thing lives."


    "No," ra said firmly, even though she was barely standing. "None of you are going anywhere dangerous."


    "Mom, we might not have a choice."


    The whispers from the darkness got louder. Now they could almost understand words:


    "Give us the bright ones... give us the little lights... we are so hungry..."


    Baby Marcus’s crying changed pitch. Instead of normal baby sounds, he was making noises that sounded almost like words.


    "What’s he saying?" Lily asked.


    Emma listened carefully. Her face went white.


    "He’s not talking to us," she whispered. "He’s talking to the old thing."


    "What’s he telling it?"


    "Where we are."


    The bunker floor cracked open. Something wet and ck pushed through, reaching toward baby Marcus with what looked like a giant finger made of tar.


    "Get him!" Kael shouted.


    But the finger moved faster than any of them. It touched Marcus’s forehead for just a second before Ronan could pull the baby away.


    Marcus stopped crying. His eyes opened, but they weren’t his normal baby blue anymore. They werepletely ck.


    "Toote," Marcus said in a voice much too old for a baby. "I can see where all the bright children are hiding now."


    Emma screamed. "It’s not Marcus anymore! The old thing is using him!"


    The baby who looked like Marcus smiled with too many teeth.


    "Hello, little Emma," he said in that horrible ancient voice. "Would you like to know what I’m going to do to your friends?"


    The darkness pouring from the cracks began to form shapes. Terrible shapes with ws and fangs and eyes that burned like stars.


    "Run," Tobias said quietly.


    "What?" ra asked.


    "RUN!" he shouted.


    They grabbed what they could and bolted for the bunker’s exit. Behind them, the thing wearing Marcus’s faceughed like breaking ss.


    But as they reached thedder leading up and out, Emma grabbed Kael’s arm one more time.


    "Daddy, there’s something else."


    "What now?"


    Emma’s silver eyes were full of tears and terror.


    "The old thing... it knows about the ce where we’re supposed to gather everyone."


    "How?"


    "Because it’s been there before. A long time ago."


    "What happened thest time it was there?"


    Emma sobbed as the vision became clearer.


    "That’s where it ate the first world."