Down, down, down, how deep does it go?

“Gwil, slow down,” Leira called from behind.

He raced down the dark stairwell, using Nyx to bury himself, hoping that would keep him hidden.

Before, Gwil had used Mir and glimpsed an immense concentration of Yalda’blood at the bottom of these stairs. The sight made him puke and lose consciousness. The clamoring Nirva voices had screamed with such shrill desperation that droplets of blood had trickled out of his ears.

He did not dare to look at it again, but he had to know the source. And… do something about it, if he could. Such a horrible thing could not be allowed to exist.

All the previous instances of Yalda’blood that he’d seen were pale imitations. Just ethereal things, essence that did not exist in the physical world. But this was real, of substance and form.

Its shape resembled an impossible spear, something that stretched on forever, plunging downward, stabbing the World in its very heart.

Gwil reached the bottom of the stairwell and stepped out into an expansive chamber.

Leira and Cort hurried down after him, but they did not share his urgency, because they had not seen.

This was not a cavern but an enormous room. The walls were built from the same black-gray blocks as the halls above, thousands upon thousands. But the ground beneath Gwil’s feet was natural, bare rock of a lighter, sandier tone.

The height of the space exceeded five stories, and the breadth could not be discerned. The only source of light was the two torches that stood a couple hundred paces ahead.

Their light revealed the silhouette of a pyramid-shaped structure, like a temple. Gwil had seen similar ruins back… in the place he’d used to live.

He chewed at his lip. Reverie. But his mind had to fight to capture that word. And the memories were ill-formed and fleeting. The windmill. The jungle. It was all slipping away. He was forgetting the place that had always been his home.

Frantically, he thought of Caris. Her death. Fun times spent in the wilderness. That was all there. And Erwin. And Mayor Guice and Margaret. The villagers.

He remembered the people, but an absence surrounded their faces. Something about the place. And not just Reverie, but the whole of Alnam—it was all obscured by impenetrable haze.

A shaking sensation in his feet drew Gwil back to the present. He gasped, clutching at his heart. An erratic roar rumbled through the chamber, vibrating the walls.

It’s just thunder, he realized. His breath settled. The storm was gathering. He could even hear the rain, falling as a whisper.

Leira and Cort finally reached the bottom.

“C’mon!” Gwil said. He made for the temple, but Leira grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. Then she slapped him across the face.

“Stop being a fool! What is going on?”

Gwil bobbed his head from side to side, then inhaled. “Okay, so with Nirva, sometimes I see a bunch of strange things. There’s like a veil of… stuff, everywhere. And sometimes it’s filled with this sea of poison. It’s in the sky, too.

“It’s black and red. Like rotten blood. It’s called Yalda’blood. And it has a voice, countless voices, actually. I think they’re who told me that name. I talked about it with Jayson, and he could see it, too.

“It’s suffering. Like a gathering of all the suffering in the whole World, maybe ever. Leira, you’re full of it. I’ve seen it. But everything and everyone has some.

“Normally, it just looks like corrupted… air or something.” He turned and pointed at the temple. “But in there, I see it for real. It’s important.”

“What the fuck?” Cort muttered.

Leira’s hands slid down from Gwil’s shoulders to grasp his hands. “I know a little about that. I’ve heard other Hallows mention it. It’s…” She shook her head. “Common. Most treat it as just a bizarre bit of phenomena. If you’re worried about it, why didn’t you say something before?”

Gwil shrugged. “It never came up. I dunno what it is.”

“You sound like Isca,” Cort said, drawing his hammer from its harness. “Can you see anything inside that temple?”

“I’m scared to look at it again,” Gwil said. “I didn’t catch sight of anything that seemed alive, though.”

They started across the chamber, slow and quietlike. The flickering sphere of torchlight shone upon a path that led to the base of the temple.

“Fucking creepy ass place,” Cort whispered.

“Leira,” Gwil said. “Do you remember the place where you found me?”

“Huh? Of course I do. It’s only been like a week, Gwil, and it’s had a bit of an impact on my life since. But… what the hell?”

“I can’t remember either,” he told her.

Leira tugged at a lock of hair. “I remember meeting you. I was trapped in my flower, and I washed up there, but I can’t see it. I remember that damned axolotl, and Skuld, and crossing the sea in the storm. And on Mikara, once we made landfall, I can see that perfectly in my mind. The beach, the cliffs. But your home and the place where I killed you. It's gone.”

“Same for me,” Gwil said. “It’s something about the islands themselves. Alnam.”

“What did you say?” Leira asked.

“That’s all very interesting,” Cort hissed, “but shh!”

The temple’s features clarified. It was not as impressive as it had seemed, and not nearly large enough to require such a vast chamber.

It was also not as pyramidal as Gwil had thought. The shape was more like a steep mound. Its surface was imperfect—ridged, gnarled, pitted. Skeletal.

It did not appear to be built from stone, nor by human hands. Gwil was reminded of a termite mound or a beehive. The material resembled tree bark.

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They stepped onto the crumbling path that led to the temple’s foot. It must have been ancient. The path, as well as the door that lay ahead, seemed humanmade.

The square slab was set within a hollow that had been carved out of the temple’s face. Gwil could not see any handle or opening mechanism, but painted on its surface was a faded crimson symbol: a crescent moon embraced around an eye.

Gwil stopped in his tracks, pointed to it. “Leira. That’s the symbol that was branded on the foreheads of the people that killed Caris.”

“Ahhh!” she said, clinging to Gwil’s arm. “The ones wearing the chains?”

He nodded. “Yeah, then the dragon knight guy came after their bodies disappeared.”

“That sounds like more cult shit to me,” Cort said. “Fucking hell. Should I smash it open?”

“Do it.”

Cort moved to the door, holding his hammer low. He swung in an upward arc. Cracks splintered across the slab’s surface. Again. Chunks of stone crumbled away. Cort bared his teeth and unleashed a barrage of strikes, reducing the slab to rubble that spilled across the threshold.

Cort stepped aside so that Gwil and Leira could approach. The interior was small, just a cramped hollow, the ceiling barely higher than the entryway. There was no décor or ornamentation. The space was no more impressive than an animal’s burrow.

Arranged in a square around the edges were four twisted pillars upholding the drooping ceiling.

At their center, lying on the ground, a desiccated body with its limbs spread and chained to the pillars.

A gleaming silver spike stuck out of the corpse. It impaled their heart.

The body was withered, but well-preserved. Dehydrated flesh sucked tight around the bones. The skin was ridged like tree bark.

“Shit,” Leira breathed, brushing her fingers on the wall while staring at the corpse.

The flesh and the temple were the same. Something like roots fanned out from beneath the body. As if the entire temple had sprouted from the corpse.

“Leira,” Cort whispered. He had to hunch to fit in this small, sad burrow. “The body. It looks like what you did to those guards when your flower went crazy.”

“I know,” she said. “It is similar, but it’s not the same. I think… A god must have captured this soul as they died. But not my god, not Megrim.”

Gwil knelt beside the dead person’s head. He scratched at the scar on his chest. The corpse’s eyes had sunk into puckered pits. The mouth was agape; the jaw hung loose.

He wiped away a tear, but he didn’t know why. He’d expected to find something monstrous in this wretched place. But it was just one poor, dead person. Abandoned. A victim of something terrible.

“Gwil?” Leira said.

“Yeah. It’s the same, right?”

The spike, silver so lustrous that it seemed ablaze. Erithist. It was about as wide as an ear of corn and protruded ten centimeters out of the corpse’s chest.

Gwil bowed his head to the ground so that he could see underneath the body. The Erithist plunged into the earth.

Gwil reached out and touched the spike. Then he gagged. He tried his best to hold against the sinister bubbling in his stomach. He failed. He sprayed the corpse with projectile vomit.

“Fucking Tartarus’s smoldering asshole!” Cort screamed without even acknowledging how he’d smacked his head on the ceiling. “You did not just puke on this ritualized and obviously cursed corpse.”

Leira knelt down. “Are you okay, Gwil?”

He laughed and shook his head. “I’m fine. It was just the Erithist. And it wasn’t that it was so bad, but that I’m still so full of lobster.”

Leira wrinkled her nose at the rancid, fishy scent, but managed to compose herself. “Do you think this is what happened to you?”

Gwil laughed even harder and felt such relief at the release of tension. “I have no idea! It sure looks like it, huh? But here I am, walking around, not dead and only nineteen years old, so what the hell is going on?”

“I can’t even imagine,” Leira said, smiling. “But I guess we won’t be just passing through the Stormlands. What do you think, though? What’d you wanna do?”

“I dunno,” Gwil said. “But I don’t like how it’s all mixed up with this Yalda’blood stuff. I wanna fix it. Maybe we can help this dead person. Free them.” He pointed at the spike. “But I can’t touch it.”

Leira stood up and reached for the spike.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Cort said, scrambling. “Don’t desecrate that body!”

“Are you kidding me?” Leira snapped. “What is your deal? If anything, we’re un-desecrating it.”

Cort cupped his chin and looked downward. “I’m… I’m a little bit superstitious, okay? Especially about dead people. It’s how I was raised.”

“Well, it’s time to bury your ideals,” Leira said. “Should I rip it out, Gwil?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t worry, Cort. This is right. I’m sure of it.”

Cort nodded while backing up as far as he could. His body filled nearly half the space. He had his hands behind his back and appeared to be struggling to keep them there.

Leira bent over and gripped the spike with both hands. She clenched her teeth as she pulled, straining, going red in the face. The eyeflower’s petals fluttered as if in blustering wind.

She let go with a sharp gasp. “Okay, I’m gonna end up ripping my arms off before it budges. Cort, you have to do it.”

“Ain’t no way,” Cort said with his arms crossed, hugging himself but trying to hide the fact.

“You fucking wimp,” Leira said. “At least loosen it up with your hammer.”

Cort shook his head.

“We only found this place ‘cause of you, Cort,” Gwil said. “If you hadn’t tried to kill my crab…”

“I bet Isca would be all for this,” Leira said.

“Don’t say that,” Cort spat. “Isca is in a cult. This is cult shit. I don’t want cursed cult-blood on my hands.”

“I’ll do it then,” Gwil said.

“You can’t!” Cort said. “You can’t use Nirva while you touch it. I bet you’re scrawny ass is hardly any stronger than Leira without it.”

“I’ll do it. Give me your hammer,” Gwil said.

“Let’s just walk away,” Cort said.

Gwil shook his head. “If you could see it, you wouldn’t say that. You’d be willing to do anything and everything to remove it.”

“He doesn’t have to do anything and everything,” Leira said. “He just needs to stop being a baby for thirty seconds.”

Cort closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He exhaled and thumped the ceiling twice with his fist. “Alright, alright. Enough with the fucking lambasting. If I’m outvoted, I’ll do it. I’ll loosen it, then one of you can rip it out with your little noodle arms.”

“Thanks, Cort!” Gwil said.

Cort raised his hammer, choked up his grip so that one hand held the top of the shaft.

Precisely, as if he were building a dollhouse, Cort gave the spike a couple of gentle taps on its side.

“ARGH!”

At first, Gwil thought something horrible was happening. Cort swung the hammer wide, smacking the wall before smashing it against the spike.

The chains rattled as the body was wrenched by the force of the blow. The spike stood bent. Cort threw his hammer down and then gripped the spike, braced one of his feet against a pillar, and pulled. Screaming through clenched teeth. Bit by bit…

The spike ripped free. Cort fell over backwards. The spike rolled across the ground. Gwil jumped away from it.

Then he used Mir.

The voices cried out in primal ecstasy. Gwil smiled at their unfettered joy. He’d never imagined such a thing. It was like music. To hear such beleaguered souls singing…

Rivers of Yalda’blood poured out from the temple and the staked corpse, rushing away like rainwater down a gutter. In the infection’s wake, a lifeless gray husk. Perfect stillness. Tranquil. Exhausted.

The shape of the bottomless wound—the spear—persisted, though it had been drained of its putrid essence. The scar took the form of an empty black void.

Gwil covered over his mouth with his hand. A sliver of the World, carved away, like the crater left by the Kaia explosion.

He cut his Mir and threw his arms around Cort. “You did it! Thank you, thank you!”

“It worked?” Cort rasped.

Gwil let go of Cort—the man was drenched with sweat—and nodded. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Cort said with a twitch. “I didn’t see it, but I felt it.” He nodded. “You were right. I am proud to have destroyed that abomination.”

Leira nudged the corpse with her foot.

“We don’t need to be doing that, though!” Cort said.

“Break these two chains,” Leira said, gesturing to the pillars on either side of her. “I need to flip the body over.”

“I can do that,” Gwil said. He surged Nirva into his foot and stomped on the joint between the chain and the pillar.

“I thought of something…” Leira said. She flipped the body onto its stomach and then crouched over it, running her hands across the dry, leathery flesh. “Fuck.”

“What is it?” Cort asked.

She pointed to a discoloration on the wrinkled skin, just below the nape of the neck. A smeared patch of gray, splotchy with darker, blurred lines.

“Numbers,” Cort said, breathless.

“Ooh!”

Leira rubbed the flesh with her fingers to manipulate its shape, but the numbers were nowhere near decipherable, stolen by time and decomposition.

“There were four digits,” she said.

Cort raised his fist to his mouth and bit down on his knuckle. “Thousands? Thousands of these?”

A shiver ran down Gwil’s spine. No, no, no. “That’s too much.”