Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
SANORA
My head was a second from cracking like an old porcelain.
If I crammed one more theory or watched one more documentary from five decades ago, my brain would spill out through my ears.
I’d been cooped up inside for three days straight.
Three days of ignoring sunlight, living off poorly cooked food, and following the invisible thread that kept pulling at my chest. A thread that always pointed in one direction.
The Crater.
I’d torn through the internet like a madwoman, clicking link after link until my browser started glitching.
Obscure blogs, geo-mapping forums, scanned journal entries from archives.
If someone had written “The Crater” on a website, I found it.
I’d watched edited drone clips with terrible synth music, downloaded grainy images, watched a ten-part series in a foreign language with captions so bad I had to guess half the time.
I even sat through an eleven-minute video of a guy just screaming into The Crater from his drone, and I saved it.
I’d exhausted three notebooks, printed enough documents to be sued, and bookmarked more tabs than I did during all years of college combined.
I was one red string away from being admitted into the psych ward.
And still, nothing. I’d heard all this before, years ago, but something in me still thought—maybe. Just maybe I’d see something different. Maybe I’d survive it.
How stupidly optimistic of me.
Just like Weeny Man said, no one had dared go near it.
At least, not and come back with something legible.
The closest any drone got was the ring of mountains around it.
Thing was, if any object got too close to the mountain walls surrounding The Crater, it shattered into pieces.
The footage cut out just before it did. Always.
Every time. Just like that. Poof. Nothing ever made it past the rim.
A mountain with a no-fly zone enforced by. ..physics? Magic? Vibes?
That alone should’ve been enough for me to call it quits.
And yet, I sat cross-legged on my bed, drowning in chaos I’d created.
Papers—some printed, others handwritten—were scattered around me like I was summoning an academic demon.
Near the door, my portable printer sat humming softly, still plugged into the wall, the box I’d carried it in left open like everything else.
All four of my moving boxes had exploded across the room—books tumbling out, half-read articles peeking from between socks.
Even the dishes I was too tired to take back to the kitchen sat abandoned at the foot of my bed.
The room was a war zone with the smell of printed ink, and I didn’t mind. This mess felt more honest than anything else in the world.
My mum’s voice echoed from my phone on speaker, somehow louder than my headache.
“That’s the end of your research, right? Just take the next train home.”
“It’s not the end,” I muttered, flipping a sheet of paper over. “I’m probably missing a clue or something.”
“Sanora, darling, if your research is dangerous—like you just said—why...?” She paused, and then her voice did that sharp rise it always did when she was trying not to scream “You’re not still thinking about that tarot reading, are you? It’s fake.”
I snorted. “No. This has nothing to do with the cards. I’m doing this because I need to.”
“No one’s forcing you, y’know.”
I nodded instinctively, even though she couldn’t see me. My eyes moved over the mountain of scattered paper again. Some were just maps, others scribbles that looked unhinged even to me.
“Just come home when you’re done with it. Alive, okay?”
“You’re not going to prod me to come now?”
“You always do your thing at the end of the day. I gave up fighting you long ago.”
A small laugh broke from my lips. “Fair enough.”
I reached for a printed photo—one I’d taken near The Crater—and scanned it for the hundredth time. Then again. Then again, willing the rocks to give me something. Anything. A hint. A glitch in the image. A ghost waving.
My temples throbbed, and I squeezed my eyes shut with a groan, my fingers shaking slightly from too much caffeine and too little sleep.
A pulse cracked through my skull.
It was a flash of something I’d seen, a memory I didn’t know I had. Something between those.
A hole.
A space carved out in the jagged rock.
Not wide, but tall. A tall, narrow slit in the rock like something had split the stone in half.
My heart took off like a startled rabbit. I dropped the photo, raked through the pile with trembling hands. Nothing. None of the pictures caught it.
I snatched my camera and flipped to the videos.
I’d recorded everything with bad angles, shaky zoom-ins, even my own panicked breaths were caught in the background.
I skimmed through six videos until I hit the one.
I’d been spinning in a circle like a lunatic trying to document everything. But mid-spin—I paused the video.
In a blur of rocks and frost was a slit. A vertical split between the stone, tall enough for someone to slip through if they were careful enough. Blink and you’d miss it. No wonder I hadn’t seen it. I’d been too focused on not dying of hypothermia.
It was near the same place I’d seen the weird, hauntingly beautiful man dressed like the Grim Reaper’s personal intern. The one standing too close to the cliff’s edge.
An electric thrill rose in my chest, like the spark before a lightning strike.
I wasn’t going near The Crater, I told myself. Not close-close. Just...a peek. I just needed to know what that opening was.
Without another thought or a single rational brain cell working, I launched from my bed and began layering up. Five shirts, every damn sweater I owned, two scarves, three gloves, and the beanie I bought three days ago. I was sweating before I even made it down the stairs.
Then I cursed, spun around, and ran back up with my backpack.
The medallion.
I dug through my box, yanked it out, and threaded a string through the hole so I could wear it around my neck.
Then I ran again. Out the door. Down the steps. Into the car.
And I drove.
The road was familiar now. The winding path, the turn-off at the faded sign, the narrowing dirt trail. My boots hit the ground hard when I got out. The evening cold bit straight through the first layer of sweaters like it wanted to punish me for coming back.
I climbed faster this time.
The rocks felt like ice bone beneath my boots. My breath fogged in front of me, and the frost clung to my gloves. The further I went, the harder it became to feel anything. That cursed wind howled like it knew I was trespassing again.
And then I reached the spot I’d seen him. I scanned the area slowly. My eyes strained, my hands shaking a little from the cold.
It took a long minute to find it, almost like it didn’t want to be seen. A tall slit between two thick boulders, surrounded by uneven rock that seemed to blend in with the terrain. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I’d have missed it again.
It was smaller than I remembered in the video. The kind of thing you could walk past a hundred times and never see.
My chest tightened with something between awe and stupidity.
I practically ran towards it.
The space was so tight I had to take off my backpack and shove it through first. Then I followed—one arm, then a leg, twisting awkwardly to avoid scraping my face on the rough stone.
As I crossed to the other side, the ground beneath me tilted. I lost my footing, cursed, and hit the earth with a grunt.
But when I lifted my head—
The world had changed.
No more frost. No more grey. No more fog.
This place...breathed.
Tall trees soared overhead, their branches curling towards each other like lovers.
A strange, wild green stretched before me—lush trees that towered high with thick trunks, vines curling up their sides like they’d been growing for centuries.
The air smelled earthy and sweet. The ground was soft with sand and soil, and wildflowers bloomed in pockets like someone had sprinkled them on purpose.
It was green. Greener than anything had the right to be. It was so green it made my chest ache with how alive it felt.
I blinked.
Was I experiencing magic?
A laugh escaped me, broken and breathless, and I rose to my feet, brushing dirt and leaves off my clothes.
Yes, dirt. Not ice.
My legs were shaky, and my breath hitched. But gods, I was standing in something impossible.
I looked around, heart pounding, mouth dry. The sky overhead was pale gold, and warm wind brushed my cheeks like a welcome.
Shouldering my backpack, I started walking with no idea where I was going. Something in me tugged again—less urgent this time, more curious, very gentle, and I let it.
Because for once in a long, long time, following that feeling felt right.
I walked.
As I moved, I snapped pictures of glowing leaves, of strange trees, of vines that looked almost too symmetrical to be real. The warmth was a relief at first. But then it got unbearable.
The air turned sticky, and the heat pressed down on me, soaking through my layers. Several minutes later, I peeled off my sweaters one by one until I was down to just one shirt. My water bottle was empty. I was sweating and thirsty and slowly losing patience.
“If the cold didn’t kill me,” I muttered, dragging one sleeve over my damp forehead, “the goddamn heat will.”
The trees started blending into one another, the ground dipping and rising in a way that made it impossible to tell if I was even going the right way.
The path felt endless, and the trees kept shifting.
My feet hurt, my throat burned, and I was sweating like I’d run a marathon.
I had no clue where I was headed or where the paths were taking me, but weirdly, I kept going.
Until I couldn’t.
Just when I was about to sit down to catch my breath, I heard something.
Water.
A steady stream.
I dropped my bag and placed the heated medallion on top of it, rushing towards the sound as twigs snapped beneath my boots.
I sprinted through the trees until I saw a narrow river tucked between roots and boulders, clear as glass, flowing over moss-covered stones.
It looked like something out of a fairy tale.
I knew I shouldn’t.
I knew.
But I dropped to my knees anyway and scooped the water up, drinking it. It was cold, and I would have thought it had come straight from a glacier if I didn’t know better.
I rinsed my face, let the cool splash over my cheeks, my neck, my arms. I stayed there longer than I should’ve, breathing like I hadn’t breathed in days.
But when I moved to stand, my legs betrayed me.
A slow, horrible weakness spread through me as dye would in water. My bones turned liquid, my limbs disconnected, and I fell sideways onto the soft earth.
Horror gripped my chest.
I was paralysed.
My eyes were fluttering, mouth heavy, and chest sinking into sleep.
The last thing I heard before the world slipped away was the gentle sound of flowing water.