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Chapter 1

VIOLET STRAINED, SEARCHING FOR THE SENSATION through the suffocating blackness It wasn’t the kind of thing she could see or hear,it all the more difficult to pinpoint She didn’t kno exactly to describe as leading her—pulling her But it was definitely an echo That much she knew for certain

Her fingertips tingled, her toes too And even though it wasn’t painful, or even unco sensation of sitting on your foot for too long

She followed it by its intensity If she turned one way, the sensation weakened The other, it grew stronger

It was almost completely black in this part of the abandoned warehouse Her feet crunched over broken glass, the sound slicing its way through the cal the rhyth as her eyes searched the shadows, trying to discern one shape fro to convince herself that she was all alone in here

“I’ herself she should stop That she’d already gone too far But after a , she starteddebris out of her path The last thing she wanted to do was to trip and fall on the glass-littered floor

She reached a doorway and the prickling shot through her arripped the exposed wood of the doorjamb to steady herself “What the hell” She wheezed as she reached up to knead the puckered flesh of her arht bruise

She shook her head, ignoring both the sting and the concerns that refused to be silent now

Moving s, Violet continued toward the echo It hadn’t always been like this; she hadn’t always been so careful But she was learningtrying to think past the overpowering need to find the dead and be aware for her own safety

But it wasn’t easy Especially nohen the echo was so strong, and she was so close When a body was calling to herbegging to be found

Ahead of her, she could see so solid and out of place in a building that had been stripped all the way down to its studs

Violet’s heart raced and her entire body itched as if she were being gouged by a million tiny thorns She wasn’t sure what to do now: Her training told her to walk away, call for help, and bring the different

She took a single step closer She had to be sure Her skin was pierced and stabbed, although whether those sensations caer certain She took another step forward, wincing froritted her teeth