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Ryon frowns, but when he kneels and places his fingers beside hers, they absorb the heat quickly, as though he’d laid a hand on a sun-soaked boulder.

He lifts his eyes to hers, and for the first time in an eternity, he can see the colour of her irises – an impossibly deep brown. They are not marred by the reflection of flames. He can see the dip in her cheek as her lips lift, he can see the fan of her eyelashes, the slope of her nose.

“We’re almost at the end,” she says, and a single tear catches in those eyelashes.

Ryon exhales in a gust, his chest releasing its dread and relenting to hope. He holds Dawsyn’s face in his hands and lays his forehead to hers.

The warmth, the light. Surely, that is what it all leads to. An end.

“Almost there,” he says, his smile matching hers.

Salem, Esra and Hector come first, squeezing themselves through the gap between walls and falling out into this opening. Like Ryon, it takes a moment for them to comprehend the changes in the Chasm, but soon their eyes grow wide. They look around for the source of light and fail to find it.

“Ry,” Esra says. “Have we died?”

Tasheem and Rivdan break through the curve next, then Abertha behind them, clattering clumsily in outward.

“Fuck,” Tash utters, her sword loosening in her palm.

They all look wretched. Ryon has never seen Salem look so gaunt. Even his rotund belly seems less inflated, his face ashen.

Esra, Hector and Abertha are no better. Hector casts a worried look at Esra, who leans heavily against his shoulder. Hector grasps the man’s waist firmly to keep him from falling.

Tasheem and Rivdan are waning. He fears they are closer to death than they allude. Even if their wings were whole and unharmed, he doubts they could now garner the strength to summon them.

Even so, each of their faces change upon sight of this new Chasm – illuminated dimly by something unknown.

“Come,” Dawsyn says. She grins over her shoulder at them through cracked lips and sunken cheeks. “Let us set eyes on the other side.”

Tasheem laughs, eyes glistening. “This is it,” she mutters. “It must be.”

“Thank the Chasm,” Hector exhales, wobbling under Esra’s weight.

“Fuck the Chasm,” Esra hisses. “Let’s get out of here.”

Dawsyn laughs hoarsely, her head turning up to the sky, eyes closed. Even smeared in black dust and leeched of any vibrancy, she still appears to Ryon a perfect creature. Surely the Mother never conspired to rid the world of her, when she took such precise care to sculpt her in the first place. Of course she would find her way out. Of course.

“Make haste,” Ryon says. “I could use a solid meal.”

Rivdan crows his assent, and they continue forward. Following Dawsyn’s footsteps down the dry trail, and as they go the Chasm brightens and brightens. The dark finally chased back by the promise of escape.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

Dawsyn keeps her eyes ahead, looking for the changes in direction, where the Chasm might open at any moment to reveal its end. The light turns to softer greys at first and then yellow. The air warms further and she laughs in quiet hysteria to feel sweat slip down her spine.

Upon the next corner, the light has taken on a bright orange hue, but still it does not reach the tops of the Chasm’s walls. Specks of black float on the air. They fall slowly down before her face and settle on her shoulders. She lifts a palm and catches one – a small flake that disintegrates in her palm.

Dawsyn turns to face the rest. They too are covered in it. Their heads and shoulders are speckled. Hector raises a hand to inspect the flakes in his palm and he lifts knowing eyes to Dawsyn’s.

Ash,he mouths to her.

“Where’d yeh s’pose this is comin’ from?” Salem asks. “Up top?” The man lifts his gaze skyward.

But Dawsyn does not answer. She has locked eyes with Ryon and sees the fear she feels.

She turns and barrels on ahead, down the Chasm. If she stops a moment longer, she may not find the strength to move onward.

The air grows hot, then hotter still. The Chasm walls begin to reflect the sinister shifting of light she feared. Red and orange lick up its glistening obsidian surface. The ash swirls in whorls overhead.