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Wind lifts Dawsyn’s fur hood and tries to pull the hair from her scalp. It is unbearably familiar. Her eyelids push valiantly against the gale but can’t open. Her ears are a chamber of wind, beating against her eardrums, demanding entrance.

Suddenly, it is silent.

The squall dulls without warning, and she can see again. Dawsyn blinks against the flurry, and shapes that were distorted by the blizzard begin to take form.

The sound of cracking makes her look down. The ice beneath her toes is splintering, streaking bolts of lightning across its surface.

No.

The sound of splitting accelerates. The air is full of its groaning. She staggers back as the ice starts to crumble away, feet skidding. On instinct she turns and dives, her shoulder catching her weight in the snow a second before the edge falls away. There is no sound of destruction as the ice meets the end of its fall – for the Chasm is too deep.

She stands at the lip of the shelf, the Ledge at her back, Glacia ahead and the Chasm between the two – a great gaping maw, mocking her isolation.

Dawsyn does not usually dare stand quite so close to its mouth. It must be stupidity that brings her here, tempting death. Sense tells her to back away, and if it weren’t for the voice, she would.

For the Chasm… it sings. Words rise from its black belly. They carry on the wind, weaving verse into her ears.

Make your soul unto itself,

Break the bone and cure.

A lament. The people of the Ledge sing it when the blizzards will not desist, when the mountain traps them inside for days. They sing it when the time between Drops spreads thin and their limbs even thinner.

For when you lie within the mouth,

The cost will be no few’r.

A song of resignation. Of yielding.

Seal your eyes and sleep,

Still your lips and cease your breath,

Better than the ache. Better than the ice.

Lie where sorrow dares not be,

Free from the hands of death.

Again and again the verse tangles in the wind, and each time the sound grows sweeter. It begins to sound like a promise. She begins to believe it. There is nothing in the Chasm, Dawsyn is sure, but darkness.

No sorrow. No pain.

As though caught in the current of the Pool of Iskra, her feet carry her toward the precipice, seduced by the simplicity of falling, the ease of ending. It is irresistible, this pull. And she lets the voice guide her over the edge, spreading her arms as she falls. But for the lurch of her stomach, she is at peace. She is free. She is flying.

Dawsyn awakens to the sensation of falling and gasps.

There is a cool burn pulsing in her palms. Frost covers her from wrist to fingertip. As soon as she holds her hands up to inspect them, the magic recedes, its glow dulling.

“It looks for ways to seep out of you,” comes Baltisse’s voice, and Dawsyn jerks upright.

The mage perches on a wooden chair before the hearth, eyeing Dawsyn in her cot with apprehension. Dawsyn pushes the covers off her legs, blinking away an imaginary wind, ridding her mind of the dream.

“The iskra seems not only resentful, but fearful, too,” Baltisse murmurs, eyes distant.

Dawsyn isn’t completely sure if she is speaking to her or not, but accompanying the mage’s uneasy words is the blossoming darkness of the woman’s irises. The ink within them unfurls slowly, eclipsing her eyes completely. A precursor to cataclysm.

Indeed, the mage looks troubled – and not for the first time.