Eva woke in a chamber called Peace, its great window opening east to the rising sun. She had stayed out with Perry until the stars appeared—the Bear before them, the Hunter behind.
After a light breakfast, she and Perry set out, with Prudence, Piety, Discretion, and Charity seeing them to the edge of the plateau of Difficulty. The way down was hard. She wasn’t sure it was any easier than the climb up, though it demanded a different kind of effort.
She slipped on the loose gravel, and Perry reached out before she fell—but she didn’t mind. She’d already caught him twice in the last hour.
They both breathed a sigh of relief when the ground leveled out. The air was sweet, heavy with the fragrance of lilies, and birds sang softly. They stopped to drink deeply from a brook that crossed the path, then continued over a small footbridge.
Little by little, the lush grass of the valley gave way to dead reeds, jutting at crooked angles, and broken timbers rising from the mire—splintered posts and collapsed fencing, the remnants of something built long ago, now fallen into ruin.
The trees stood thin and black, their branches stripped bare—charred fingers reaching upward. No leaves stirred. No birds broke the silence. Even the wind seemed to have forgotten this place.
The air carried a faint chill that settled into Eva’s bones, dampness clinging to her skin and clothes. There was a smell, too—wet earth and rot, with something faintly acrid beneath it. As if the ground had been scorched and never quite recovered.
The sky was a dim, colorless blue—almost gray. What little light remained reached the valley thin and diffused, casting no shadows. As they walked, the mist thickened until the path ahead nearly vanished.
Eva stepped carefully over fragments of broken iron darts littering the path—large enough that, in her hands, they would have been javelins. Some had been driven deep into the stone, splitting it apart.
Perry’s hand tightened around his staff. Eva held his other hand just as tightly. Some of the rocks were stained a dull black.
Flames flashed past her face. A thud. Perry’s hand wrenched from hers. His staff clattered against the rock. He tried to rise, his hand clutching his shoulder, crimson spreading beneath his fingers. The color drained from his face, and he collapsed in a heap. A glowing iron dart lay at his side.
Her daggers were already in her hands. She drove forward, putting her full weight behind the strike at the vague shape in the mist. The blow landed solidly—but glanced off, the impact jarring her wrist. That much force should have felled anything… human.
Whatever it was… it towered over her. Clouds of sulfur billowed around it, choking her. She ducked as wings swept overhead. Sparks and flame swirled, blinding her.
“Eva, run.” Perry’s voice was feeble. No. Not like this.
She thrust her dagger again, but the creature’s tail lashed across her chest like a whip, and she went down, one dagger slipping from her grasp.
Her free hand caught fur—its foot. She flipped the dagger in her grip and drove it down as hard as she could. The angle was wrong—but the blade struck something.
A massive roar—and a sweeping force that drove the breath from her chest. She slammed into a rock, her head exploding with pain. Her vision blurred at the edges.
She struggled to stay awake—to keep her eyes open. Then she saw him. The face of a lion—eyes blazing with pure evil, wings spread wide. Apollyon. She had passed his statue a thousand times in the City. He towered over Perry and lifted his limp body as if he were nothing. Despair flooded her.
The world tilted around Eva. Her ears rang, her vision blurred. She wheezed, one hand pressed to the pain in her ribs. What had just happened? Her thoughts scattered. Her head throbbed.
Perry. Panic surged through her. She tried to stand but fell back to her knees. She crawled to where he had been—or where she thought he had been. Nothing.
She searched desperately. Her hand found a wet rock. She brought it to her nose—the iron scent unmistakable. Fresh blood. Perry’s blood.
A trail of blood led north into the darkness. She followed it. She was forgetting something. Her daggers.
She found one where she had dropped it, the other ten feet away beside the rock she had slammed into. She didn’t return them to her sleeves. No time. She followed the trail of blood as fast as she could, ready to strike at anything in her way.
A groaning filled the air—deep, terrible groans of dying men. Lamentations rose on every side, thick with torment. She kept walking.
She stopped short, nearly pitching forward. The ground dropped away into a bottomless abyss, its sides flickering in the darkness with the fires of Hell.
She sank to her knees at the edge of the abyss, trembling, tears spilling freely down her cheeks. There was no bottom—and no way down.
