Chapter 16 Up Is Down? #2
There’s a tall fire crackling in the hearth, glowing with golden warmth. Plush cushions and soft rugs line the room, like someone’s quarters carved out of the mountain itself.
Mariel blinks, dazed. Cassy sinks to her knees, teeth chattering. Vivian is barely conscious, her lips blue.
“We… we need to stop. Just for a moment,” Cassy stammers, crawling toward the hearth.
“She’s right.” Mariel lowers Vivian down onto one of the rugs. “We won’t make it if she freezes.”
As they huddle together next to the fire, I sense it. The closer we get, the colder the room feels. I force myself to my feet, pushing past the dizziness, and step toward one of the torches on the wall. I reach out and put my hand into the flame.
It licks my skin. But it doesn’t burn.
My stomach knots. “The flame…” I murmur. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Mariel looks over, teeth chattering. “What are you talking about?”
But I don’t answer. I make my way to the opposite end of the room, as far from the hearth as I can go, right next to a wall of ice, smooth and glassy. It shimmers faintly with light just beneath the surface. I reach out.
Heat. Real, radiating heat rolls from the ice like a dragon’s breath.
“Cassy, Mariel! Come here!”
But when I turn back, they’re already freezing. Frost has begun to gather on their lashes. Their clothes are crusted in ice. Cassy is shivering violently, her hands curled tight against her chest. Mariel blinks slowly, dazed. Vivian barely moves.
“No—get away from the fire!” I shout.
“What?” Cassy whimpers. “It’s our only chance. I’m… so cold…”
“It’s not real! It’s draining you.”
Mariel hesitates, teeth chattering. “This-s-s d-d-doesn’t m-m-make any s-s-sense…”
But even as she protests, the hearth flares unnaturally. Flames leap from it, arching like serpents.
I dive forward and yank them back just as the illusion collapses.
The room shifts.
The luxurious rugs transform back to crumbling furs. The fire explodes outward, catching the corner of a tapestry that wasn’t there before. Smoke chokes the air.
“Where?” Cassy cries. “There’s no other way but back!”
“To the wall!” I shout. We stumble forward, and I press my palm against the ice.
Agony lances through my skin as it sears my palms. I suck in a sharp breath but don’t pull back.
“It burns,” I say, gritting my teeth.
“What?” Mariel gasps. “It’s ice!”
Steam curls from my fingers as the frost sizzles. The ice begins to drip.
“You’re melting it,” Cassy says in awe.
“Hot is cold,” I say through gritted teeth.
The pain is blinding. But I press harder.
Behind us, the maze snarls, an inhuman sound that sends tremors through the floor.
One deep crack splits the ice, then another. A jagged fracture shatters across the surface like lightning.
Light bursts through, and the wall shatters. The ice falls away in sheets, and beyond it, we see a golden-lit tunnel, breathing warmth. Without hesitation, we step through.
At first, the corridor is silent. Then whispers warp the air, slithering through it like smoke, curling through the shadows around us. A thousand voices rise—fear, rage, sorrow—none of them human. The warmth from the doorway fades, swallowed by the blackness ahead.
“We need to keep moving,” I whisper. “We can’t stop now.”
We press on, following a narrow tunnel that descends in a tight spiral. Vivian is nearly limp between us as we drag her forward. Cassy walks ahead, scanning wildly with every step.
The whispers deepen, and black tendrils rise from the cracks in the floor. One slithers around Cassy’s ankle. Another coils around Mariel’s back. I shout and swing a broken torch through the air, shattering the shadow on Mariel—but more crawl forward like snakes.
We run.
The passage opens into a massive chasm.
Light shines on the far side, pouring from a glowing archway carved from luminous stone. We can see it. We can feel it. But the pit yawns between us—bottomless, wide, and utterly uncrossable.
“There has to be another way around!” Cassy cries, but there isn’t time.
The shadows surge from behind us, faster now, shrieking like banshees. They claw at the walls, dragging themselves across the stone, their forms unraveling and reforming as they come.
“Climb!” Mariel pants, already pulling at the rock face. “Quick!”
We scramble for handholds. The wall is steep and crumbling, loose gravel biting into my palms. Cassy manages to haul herself onto a narrow ledge no wider than her boots. Mariel tries to lift Vivian after her, but the stone shifts under her feet.
She slips.
Mariel gasps, barely catching Vivian’s wrist as her body sags toward the pit.
I lunge forward and hit the ground hard, skin scraping raw. I twist, thrusting the torch behind me to repel another shadow. The creature shrieks and recoils.
I grab Vivian’s other hand and heave. Mariel strains beside me, teeth bared. Together, we drag Vivian onto the ledge between them.
The relief is fleeting. The ledge cracks.
Stone fractures beneath Cassy’s feet. Pebbles rain down into the darkness below, swallowed without a sound.
“I can’t reach any higher!” Cassy sobs. “There’s nowhere to go!”
The shadows close in, screaming louder now. They stretch into grasping hands, leering faces, snapping jaws. They tear at our clothes and rake at our skin.
The walls begin to move. Stone groans. The chasm seems to breathe.
“We’re not going to make it!” Cassy screams.
My breath comes ragged and fast. The riddle burns through my mind, sharper now, undeniable.
Up is down. Left is right. Hot is cold. Dark is light.
I stagger back, my heel slipping on loose rock—and I look down.
The pit isn’t empty.
Deep in the black, something pulses. A soft, distant glow, like stars submerged beneath water.
My heart stutters.
“Dark is light,” I whisper.
“What?” Cassy cries. “What are you saying?!”
“We’re not supposed to climb out,” I say, louder now. “We’re supposed to fall in.”
They stare at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“No—no, that’s insane!” Cassy sobs.
“This is the last part,” I say, voice shaking but sure. “It’s not about fighting or fleeing. It’s about trust. About surrender.”
“There has to be another way,” Mariel pleads, tightening her grip on Vivian.
I shake my head. “There isn’t.”
Above us, the shadows surge as one—an oncoming wall of teeth and smoke and pain.
“We have to jump!” I shout. “It’s the only way out!”
“No!” Cassy screams. “We can’t—”
The ledge gives another violent shudder.
There is no more time.
I meet Cassy’s terrified gaze. Mariel’s—wide, searching. Vivian’s—half-lidded, unfocused, but trusting.
What we do in life echoes into eternity.
“Trust me,” I say.
And then I let go.
“No—!” they scream as one.
The darkness rushes up to meet me…
…and blooms into light.
The shadows dissolve around me, and I plunge through what feels like smoke, then stars, then utter silence. Then I hit something soft but solid.
A cavern lit only by starlight.
The air is still. Sacred. The walls glow faintly, like the sky has bent downward to kiss the earth.
I stumble forward, drawn to the impossible pool ahead.
Its surface is perfectly calm, like a mirror stretched across the floor.
It reflects a sea of stars, but there’s no sky above us, only stone. None of this makes sense.
I kneel, reaching for the surface, which ripples beneath my touch. When my eyes meet my reflection, something shifts. A sudden pressure floods my skull. Flashes flicker before my eyes like a candle fighting the wind.
The king. A crown slipping from his fingers.
A wedding dress, burning.
My sister’s lifeless face, lips parted in a scream that never came.
An endless flame consuming the land.
My dagger dripping blood.
Finally, a single rose. I reach for it.
Thorns cut my finger, and blood blooms. The rose turns crimson and bursts into flame, crumbling to ash in my palm.
That’s when she appears.
A woman, cloaked in silver and shadow, rises from the smoke like a memory I’ve forgotten how to hold. Her face is ageless, carved from time and sorrow, her eyes glowing with the soft, mournful light of distant stars.
She does not speak at first. She only looks at me. Through me.
I try to ask who she is, but my voice is gone, swallowed by the roar of unseen waves. When she finally speaks, her voice is not one voice, but many, echoing and layered, like a chorus of ghosts singing a forgotten lullaby.
When hope is ash and faith undone,
a heart of thorns and flames must become one.
Find the truth and unlock the past
before the crimson glow has passed.
Life to death, and death to life—
break the curse, or pay the price.
Then she lifts a hand and points to the ashes in my palm.
The pool begins to boil. The blood spreads.
And before I can scream, the ground gives way, and I fall again.