There was no up and down. Only falling.
It was silent and windless, but my body sensed it—the same way your stomach senses when you've stepped off a precipice. I scratched at nothing, searching for something—a wall, an edge, Thorn's hand, anything. However, Thorn was absent. Only the weight of his name, like a scream swallowed, burning in my throat.
Then the dark cracked. With memory, not with light.
A woman with my face, older and crowned; a baby in an obsidian cradle; wolves kneeling in rivers of silver; a man of fire offering a hand before being swallowed by shadow were among the images that rushed past me as I fell. Like film melting on a projector, they bled and flickered together.
I wanted to close my eyes. I couldn’t.
The deeper I sank, the more the voice rose, no longer a w
