The road north ended on the twelfth day.
One moment they were walking on what had once been a paved highway, its stones cracked and worn, its edges swallowed by ash. The next, the ground simply stopped. Ahead of them, the world had been torn open.
Kaelen stood at the edge and looked down into nothing.
It was not a canyon. It was not a chasm. It was a wound in the earth, miles wide, its edges raw and bleeding darkness. The twilight sky reflected off surfaces that were not stone, that shifted and breathed, that gave off a warmth that had nothing to do with the sun. And at the center, so far below that it was barely visible, something pulsed.
The Breach.
"It's bigger," Kaelen said. His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. "It was not this large before."
Toren moved to his side, his sword drawn, his eyes scanning the edges of the wound. "Is there a way down?"
"There's always a way down," Kaelen said. "The question is whether we come back up."
He began to walk along the edge, looking for a path. The ash was thick here, deeper than it had been in the Ashen Belt, and it shifted under his feet like sand. Behind him, he heard the others follow—Toren's steady tread, Elyss's softer steps.
They walked for an hour. Two. The wound stretched on, endless, its edges crumbling into the darkness below. Once, Kaelen saw something move down there, something large, something that slid through the darkness like a fish through water. He did not point it out.
He found the path at the end of the third hour.
It was not a path. It was a scar, a fissure that cut into the side of the wound, descending at an angle that was almost walkable. The walls of the fissure were smooth, too smooth, as if something had melted its way through the rock.
"The expedition used this," Kaelen said. "Four years ago. We found it the same way."
He did not add that only half of them had made it to the bottom. That the rest had fallen, or been taken, or simply disappeared into the darkness. The others could see it in his face.
"I'll go first," Toren said.
Kaelen shook his head. "I know the way."
He stepped onto the fissure and began to descend.
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