I fight to turn my eyes away from the grey of the sky, tinted dark by the glass, to the blue of the room. I want to stare at the sun, dim as it is, try to make out if there are clouds in the sky. That has to wait. We have a journey to finish.

In the middle of the room, there's a vortex. It's almost covered by the roiling fog, but once I follow the currents, I see it. Everything presses together there, the blue glow turning dark and opaque from the pressure and being layered on top of itself so many times.

"There," I breathe out.

End of the road. My hands shake so much that I struggle to get the bag off my back. In the end, I have to pull the strings open with my teeth, as I can't get good enough grip of them to open them properly.

"Excited?" Finna says, but her voice shakes as well. I can see her shiver, her face alive with a mix of emotions, too fast to name.

Rworg puts down Lirn. The whiteling stays seated where he is placed, eyes wide in perpetual astonishment. Hearn crouches to take a look at him, pressing his hands on his shoulders and nodding his head at him, like he's trying to tell him everything is going to be fine.

Rworg steps to stand next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. I take out the ambronite, its glow sharing the color with the thick fog swirling around us, yet not mixing in with it. Where the ambronite shines, the fog doesn't exist.

Finna steps to stand on my other side. She stands just a bit shorter than me, jaw clenched tight, mouth pressed into a thin line. "Ready?" she asks.

"Ready," I say, my tongue thick in my mouth.

"Ready," Rworg says.

Hearn picks up Lirn, pulling him up and leaning him on his shoulder. "I don't know how long your road has been, but I have seen enough to—"

"Yeah, yeah," Finna says. "Come on, get over here, so you're not left behind."

Rworg cranes his head to nod at Hearn. "You are part of our little group, old. No speeches are necessary."

Finna scoffs. "You were the one who made the speech last time, so don't even try it." She nudges her head at me and then to the middle of the room, at the vortex. "Slam it!"

I'm not going to slam it. I approach the vortex with the ambronite stretched out toward it, my arm reached out. I don't want to risk breaking the ambronite or leaving us engulfed in the fog even for a moment, in case the mana doesn't all get sucked into it, or whatever it is that the stone does.

The blazing motes inside the floor blink out as we walk over them, the blue glow replacing the white glare. The mana swirls in the air, the fog being spouted into the room through the grills vanishing as it rushes to the bubble of clear air surrounding us.

The vortex in the middle of the room spins around and around. I can see it more clearly now, as there's less fog between me and it. It looks like the mana gets sucked into the middle of the room, but it doesn't have a place to go after that. It just pushes in, collapsing on itself, swirling in a thousand layers, like a thousand storm clouds pressed together, layered like an onion, each of the layers grinding and rotating against each other.

In the middle of the vortex, there's a dark spot. A tiny speck of black, except that black doesn't begin to describe the sensation of looking into it. I feel like my gaze falls into the tiny speck, like into a bottomless well. A single step toward the void takes minutes, feeling like I'm falling, disappearing. There's nothing but the spot, devouring the mana and me. I can feel my arm stretching out toward it, my leg starting to take a step forward. I know it will take thousands of years before my foot lands on the ground for the next time.

The speck yawns black.

It's the end.

A hole bored into the world, my soul falling into it.

Finna grunts next to me and I glance at her. She looks terrified, her eyes wide and black, only a sliver of color visible at the edges of her dilated pupils. A tear forms on the corner of her left eye. I see the void in its reflection, myself glancing at her, her eyes wide, tear forming on the corner—

I scream, jerking my arm forward, pushing the ambronite toward the void.

It's quiet.

I release my grip.

The ambronite clatters on the ground. It rolls once, settling to sit in the middle of the room. It no longer shines blue. Instead, it looks like a clump of pumice, dark and brittle. As I watch it, it starts to crumble into nothing. So much for nothing being able to affect ambronite, I think idly.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Wisps of mana leak out from the grills around the room. It looks like the last gasp of a dying animal, small coughs of blue glowing mana puffing into the room, to rise and fade into the air.

The air is clear. The vortex is gone, with no sign it was ever there. I hear Rworg take a halting step and let out a breath. Finna falls on her knees, hands dangling to the ground.

"We did it," I say, sighing. "It's over."

Hearn and Lirn sit next to each other on the black stone floor. Hearn sniffles. "I guess it really—"

That's when the tremor hits. It's stronger than any so far. I hear and feel the black stone cracking and breaking, a crack loud enough to hurt my ears, with the floor shifting to the side sharply. I fall to my side, with Rworg stumbling on me. He slams his hand to the floor, stopping himself from crushing me.

The whole room around us shakes and strains. The tremors aren't just outside the walls this time, and they don't stop. The rumbling sounds from somewhere deep below us, like the earth itself is breaking apart.

"This is your fault!" Finna shouts. I can barely make it out over the cracking and grinding of stone. The black stone doesn't break like a boulder cracking, but like massively thick glass snapping, with high-pitched singing and screaming, vibrations that carry through the stone, rattling my bones in the same way the frozen sledgehammer did.

The rumbling stops. Light, bright like the noon sun, blasts us from above. We're all lying on the ground. I can hardly make out anything, as the light is so bright, reflecting off even the dark stone. I press my eyes closed, but the light shines through my eyelids. Afterimages swim in the red.

"The sun," I hear Rworg breathe out.

I creak open an eye, opening it as little as I can. Above me, the sky is radiant blue. There are hardly any clouds spread on the blue, like tufts of wool sprinkled around the sky. The sun is almost directly above me, so warm it takes my breath away. The glass above is crystal clear, the cracks reflecting the light.

"It's actually bright," Finna says quietly.

Hearn and Lirn are hugging each other, Hearn covering both of their eyes. I realize they must have never seen the sun.

I open my eyes wider, as they slowly get more used to the daylight. A raven lands on the glass ceiling, black against the blue. It spreads it wings and caws, before taking off again. The sounds of nature hit me all at the same time. Other birds sing and I can hear the wind rustling leaves.

I glance back to where we came into the room. The doorway is a black outline on the wall. The corridor is gone. "We're back," I say, smile creeping on my face. "Really, back."

"What does that mean?" Hearn says, cradling Lirn's head in his arms.

I open my mouth to answer. My smile freezes. Hearn looks at me, waiting for me to start talking.

We're back. He is gone. The Monolith has snapped, the space inside it broken to return to its natural state. The doorway that previously lead outside is a fractal maze of grooves, its surface looking like an impossibly intricate drawing etched on solid stone. Immeasurable stretches of black corridors, all folded into a spiderweb of grooves and bumps, reminders of a network.

We don't have to find our way out. The outside has found us.

Rworg walks first to the doorway, running his fingers on the grooves. He returns to place a hand on Hearn's shoulder. Hearn doesn't look up. He just keeps patting Lirn's long white hair, running his fingers through it.

Finna circles around the room, grabbing on to the edge of the glass ceiling and pulling herself up to look outside. She lowers herself down, pouting her lips. She takes a long breath in, then lets it out.

"I hope you all can climb," she says.

Finna, Hearn, Lirn and I press our backs to the wall, trying to stay as close to it as possible. Hearn pushes Lirn between himself and the wall, raising his arm to cover their heads.

Rworg smashes his sword through the glass. The ceiling snaps, massive cracks running into all directions from the place where Rworg's sword cuts through it. The sword is still frozen in time. It cuts the glass almost as much as it breaks it. Heavy shards rain down into the room. One hits my shoulder, but it lands with its flat edge and just bounces off, bludgeoning me instead of cutting my whole arm off.

The pieces are large, like a wagon filled with sharp cinderblocks was tipped into the room. At least they don't shatter. If the entire floor of the room would have turned into a sea of slivers and glass caltrops, we would have been in trouble.

Rworg shears the edge of the wall with his sword. The glass has been set directly into the stone, but Rworg cuts it like he's giving the wall a shave, pushing the blade along its edge in an angle. The blade cuts through, the sound ringing and grinding, beautiful and terrible at the same time.

Rworg uses his sword to push the glass around, enough to make a path for us. He lowers himself on one knee, and Finna clambers up him like she was climbing a ladder. Meanwhile, Hearn guides Lirn carefully through the glass as well.

My breath catches, as Finna stands up on the wall. Wind flaps her clothes and hair, as she raises her face up to the sky, basking in the sunlight. "Any ideas what we could tie a rope to?" she asks, face still pointed up.

I'm sure a gust of wind will blow her away at any moment. She seems equally sure it won't. "Please, can you not?" I ask, watching as she starts walking around the wall, placing her feet on the narrow edges to avoid stepping into the glass.

"Stop stressing and get the rope. Just tie it to one of the grills," she says.

The difficult part is getting Lirn down. Finally, Hearn manages to coax the vacant whiteling to grip onto the rope. Hearn rubs his palms on the rope and by some reflex, Lirn grips on to it. Rworg is standing on the edge and hoists Lirn up. Wind blows his ponytail around, but Rworg's balance seems to be as good as Finna's. It must be because of all the spinning he does when fighting.

Finna is already standing on the ground. The rope doesn't reach down to the ground, but she swung herself to a tree and tied the rope there.

Rworg places Lirn's hands on the rope and tests them, yanking on them a couple of times. He nods, satisfied, and pushes the thin jonungaard off the edge. Hearn and I both scream up at him, surprised and panicked.

"What?" Rworg asks, waving a hand down. "His grip is strong. He slid to the tree."

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