Page 83 of The Song of the Void

Reiven chuckled as he wrote his own letter, wish, or prayer. “When I was a kid, I used to climb these trees and rip the tubes off.” He shot me a knowing look. “Don’t worry about Jin and Akina. They’ve been without me for years, and they’ll get through life just the same as they have been. I’m actually impressed with Jin. He’s grown up. Look at him, acting all regal and serious.”

His laughter made my heart sink further into my boots. I wanted to argue with him, that they weren’t going to have to continue life without him, but instead I turned my attention back to the creamy sheet of paper and wrote my own message.

Reiven helped me roll it up until it was small enough to slip into a tube and tie around a branch, joking all the while that I probably peeked at his note when he wasn’t looking.

“Is it a letter for your loved ones?” I asked quietly.

“Nope. It’s a wish for the future.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but Vaetrik didn’t bother writing anything. Even Shaddan and Calinia left papers of their own, and Ash took the longest out of all of us writing his. Once we were moving again, it didn’t take long for us to arrive, and I found myself staring up at the towering volcano. A wisp of smoke trailed from the top. Akina and Jin led us to stand before a large circle cut into the base. Peculiar markings were etched in the stone, lines and symbols that formed an indecipherable design.

Jin tapped it with one finger. “Let the gate to Hell be opened for those who have come from afar to challenge.”

The six of us stood in a loose line before the volcano, and none of us flinched as the ground trembled. The circular stone door slid upwards and out of sight with the grate of rock on rock, leaving a shower of pebbles and dirt in its wake. Inside there was only darkness. No torches or magical sconces, or even magma to light the way.

Reiven, Vaetrik, and Shaddan were the first brave enough to venture inside, but only so deep as the light of day reached. The others followed, and I was the last to join, paying close attention to the crunching of the gravel beneath my boots, the wave of blistering air that buffeted my face. More footsteps crunched on the rock behind us, and I turned to see Akina and Jin bowing to us from outside as the stone slab began to return to its original position.

“I truly hope all of you return alive,” Akina said.

A chill scraped up my back, and the stone slamming into the ground to shut us inside the darkness brought with it a wave of nausea. It was strange. Even though I was a Siren and could see in the darkness of the Deep…I couldn't see anything inside, not even my companions. Quiet also fell over us the moment the door closed. I couldn't even hear them breathe.

I reached beside me for Reiven's hand, but all I found was empty air. “Rei? Ash?”

Nothing.

Loneliness crushed into me without mercy as I stood there in the dark, too apprehensive to walk forward without knowing what was out there in the shadows. Not even Calinia or Shaddan or Vaetrik's presence remained. When I finally gathered the courage to walk a bit to the side to find the wall, there was still nothing. Not even gravel beneath my feet. It was all empty space.

Well, I can’t just stand here. Come on, Zephra. Get moving.

Walking through an oblivion of heat and darkness for hours was enough to make me lose my mind. No way for me to know if I was going the right direction, or if I was walking in circles. The further I walked, all I found was more nothing. Not even the flap of bat wings or a spider dropping into my hair. My boots on the darkness below me didn’t make a sound.

At some point, I began to hum to myself to break the intolerable silence. My voice reverberated throughout the empty space, echoing back to me, but something was odd about the echo. My heart rate picked up, and I started to run.

“Is someone there?” I shouted.

“Further in.”

It should have been my words repeating themselves. But they distorted as they echoed until they were unrecognizable. I chased after that bizarre phenomenon, calling out and following the direction of the wrathful whispers that came back to me.

A glimmer of azure light welcomed me out of the darkness, and I stumbled into a tunnel, tall as the throne room in the castle. The walls were a stark white, peppered with thousands of rough crystals that glowed blue, almost giving the place the appearance of underwater light. Where were all the flames? Was I actually in Hell?

“Ash! Reiven! Calinia!”

“The living come too far.”

Not one voice, not my voice, but many strange voices melding together irregularly into a surreal cacophony. Female, male, young, old. Timeless. The voices were everything and nothing, bouncing off the cave walls and singing off the crystals as I ran deeper. They whispered, wondering what a living Siren could be doing there. The voices grew louder, mocking me and laughing until all went silent, and I slid to a stop before an abnormality in the tunnel.

“Water?” My voice didn’t echo, and the angry whispers didn’t answer.

Before me, the tunnel no longer had a solid rock floor. Instead, a pool of murky water fully encapsulated the ground, with only a thin, zig-zagging stretch of rock crossing it from end to end, just wide enough for me to put one foot in front of the other.

If there was some illusion or trick here, perhaps it would be easiest to simply swim across, and not bother with the potential dangers of the fragile-looking rock bridge. My puzzled reflection stared back at me in the inky water. I leaned down to dip my hand in, but the heat rising from the water made me pause. When I tried to urge it to rise into a wave, it remained as still as death.

Not water.

I tossed a stone into it, and the illusion dissipated for a split second. The pretty blue became scorching, bubbling magma, ready to disintegrate any who fell off the bridge—or who tried to jump in.

A shiver crawled its way up my body and locked around my throat, but I shook it off, reminding myself that Ashkade and Reiven might need my help at that very moment. There was no room for hesitation. I steeled myself and set foot on the bridge, starting across it as carefully as a tightrope walker in one of those cruel circuses in Kirdiak.