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The Chasm no longer sings or whispers to her. It does not muddle her senses with its ratcheting echoes. Now, it roars. It starts as an exhale, then builds into the moan of some deep earth-dwelling beast. The farther she creeps, the louder it becomes. There is a corner ahead. It glows red and hot in the distance. She can see the reflections dancing up the walls.

“Dawsyn!”

She hears, but does not heed. She is too lost in the growing noise, the intensifying heat, the drum of her heartbeat.

No,she thinks, her feet gathering momentum toward this last turn.No.

For she knows the gate to paradise does not glow red. It does not lick her skin with a burning tongue.

She coughs and squints her eyes against the sting of smoke, her pulse hammering, her mind still gripping false promises.

She hurls herself around the narrow corner and there she finds it, almost topples into it.

The end.

Around the corner, there is no path. It falls away, and Dawsyn’s feet catch on the precipice of its cliff. Here, her eyes squint, but this time it is not darkness that impedes her. It is the near-unbearable heat. The burning brightness of light.

“Mother above,” Dawsyn mutters shakily.

A clamour comes from behind, and she turns just in time to ward off the crush of the others, lest they push her over the edge. “Stop!” she shouts to them, holding up her hands.

But she needn’t bother. They have all frozen in their spots, having rounded that last corner. They stand stock still, gasping in awe at the sight beyond Dawsyn – at the end of the Chasm.

A lake resides fathoms below. It stretches in a perfect circle, the length of which Dawsyn would not hasten to guess. She can just barely see the walls on the opposing side, far in the distance.

But it is not a lake of water, or ice. It is a lake of fire. The molten rock churns and bubbles. Waves of red and golden fire collide and emit a terrible roar. Fragments of stone fall from the rock face and it sends a cloud of smoke and ash into the air. It cloys in the back of Dawsyn’s throat.

This is the end of the Chasm.

Not a green valley, untouched and unclaimed.

Not the collision of the Chasm walls, cruelly blockading their freedom.

No. The end of the Chasm is hell. It is the fires of the underworld.

“Mother,” Dawsyn hears and it is Tasheem who utters it, her hands hitting the earth before her, finally succumbing. “Mother…please!”

“It can’t be…” Esra says, and his voice is a whisper of what it was, the Chasm having stolen his verbosity, his very spirit. “No.”

“For nothing,” Hector says, sinking to his knees. “Was all of it… for nothing?” It seems he asks the sky. “WAS ALL OF IT FOR NOTHING?”

Then he is howling.

Every one of them sinks to the ground. They let their legs give way, having carried them far enough. They surrender there, at the path’s end, having travelled the length of it only to find a slower death.

To follow Dawsyn.

Her fault. Her fault.

Ryon lowers to his haunches, his thighs shaking. And then his fist beats against the ground. He roars and turns to launch his fist into the rockface, every muscle in his arm wired in tension. “FUCK!” he shouts, loud enough to crack Dawsyn’s bones.

She covers her ears. Mutes sound. She sees and hears her friends fall apart, but it doesn’t compare to her own insular destruction.

And there is a justice in that – that she should suffer most.

She hears her breaths. They are impossibly heavy, uneven. She feels the blood pulsing in her eardrums. She feels the weak tendrils of iskra singing its own requiem. She sees plainly that she has led every single one of these good people to their death.

This cannot be it. They did not survive all they have only to arrive here.