"Don't do it, Lyra! Let the gray take me!" Kael’s voice broke through the fog, a ragged, desperate sound that tore at my heart.

He was fighting it, struggling against the Shadow’s smoky claws as they anchored him to the crumbling ruins of the Echo-Verse but even as he shouted, his legs were already beginning to turn back into that terrifying, translucent mist, the emerald light of the medallion was flickering wildly, the spiderweb crack across its surface weeping an oily, black smoke that ...