“Follow me,” she said to the remaining tributes. “And do not touch anything that shines.”
She saw the demons for what they were.
Iris did not answer. She did not need eyes. She had something better. iris in the labyrinth of demons
The black rim she always saw—the void at the edge of every demon—she realized it was not a weakness. It was a door. A door that opened to the one thing demons could not touch. “Follow me,” she said to the remaining tributes
“Don’t,” Iris said quietly.
It was a vast chamber with no walls—only a pulsing, obsidian sphere suspended in nothing. Around it, demons danced in their true forms: not claws and fangs, but shapes that hurt the mind. Twisting geometries. Colors that did not exist. Sounds that felt like betrayal. She did not need eyes
The tributes wept and laughed. Elara found her son—freed from a demon’s belly, dirty but alive.