"Wait," I say.

Rworg stops. "What?"

"This corridor isn't that long," I say. "Something is going on."

Rworg rubs his beard. He glances back at the entrance. "I thought we would be further in."

"That's it exactly. Look at the line Finna has left on the stone."

Rworg looks down and chuckles. "She is pretty sharp."

I groan and rub my temples, though I guess I deserved that after the pun about the steaks. "There are two lines. Where did the other one come from?"

Rworg frowns. He nudges Finna, and the sharp edge of her hair bumps into the other line. "Hmm," he says. "The tombs are said to affect time and space."

I kneel next to Finna and run my finger over the line. She's cutting deep into the stone. The two lines are exactly the same. Ahead, the corridor veers right, like it has for the whole time we have been walking. Behind, the entrance is still visible, light shining in from the outside.

"I will walk backwards and watch," Rworg says.

I rub my chin. Why couldn't Lictor bring me a razor? "Maybe. Or we could search where the second line starts?"

"I could throw something. Would it circle back?"

"Let's search where the second line starts," I say.

"Finna was right. You are boring," Rworg says, but starts walking again, gaze following the line on the ground.

Finna scrapes ahead, digging the original groove deeper now that Rworg moved her to it. It's almost unnoticeable when it happens, but I'm watching for it to happen. The lighting becomes slightly brighter, and the line shifts on the ground. The entrance has hopped closer to us, or we to it, more likely. Our shadows stretch suddenly longer and sharper ahead, landing on the two lines that stretch ahead.

"So? What happened?" Rworg asks.

"You're the expert on weird black tombs," I say. "Didn't you say you heard these things affect space?"

"They were but legends, tales of space twisted and knotted into loops," he says.

That might be what is happening here. After everything I've been through, nothing surprises me anymore. So, we're in a space loop. Is this corridor just a decoy to lure people to walk around until they grow tired and leave? Is there a secret entrance somewhere that would be the actual way to enter the monument? I sit on the black stone floor and lean my back against the wall. I take off my backpack and lay it beside me on the floor. "We've just been rushing around like damn fools. Let's stop and see what information Tenorsbridge gave us."

I pull out a flat leather parcel from the bag and open the string holding it closed. The leather shines even in the dim light of the tomb, polished and waxed, finer than what I've seen anyone have in the village. I roll my eyes at the city and its people as I pull out two tightly folded papers. One is a letter from Lictor, telling us he's sorry there's only so little information and asking us not to stab him when we get back. I crumple it up and throw it toward the entrance. I'm not sure if he's trying to be funny or not, but it's better if Finna doesn't see it after we get her back.

The other paper appears to be more promising. There are diagrams and lots of finely written text, lines pressed close to each other. I squint and pull it closer to my face as Rworg clears his throat.

"Where did the paper go to?"

He points down toward the entrance. The corridor is empty.

I look in the other direction, but the white ball of paper is not there either. It should be easy to see it against the dark stone, but there's nothing. Just two lines running into the distance. "Maybe it's around the corner?" I say.

"Maybe," Rworg says. "Let's see."

I grab onto his trouser leg as he starts walking and pull him back. He nearly lifts me back to standing before he stops.

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"What?" he asks, looking down at me.

"The paper might have been turned to dust or be flung into another universe or time or whatever," I say. "Last time might have worked out for you, but let's take this more carefully this time. Mandollel told you how dangerous it was and how lucky you were..."

My voice trails off. Mentioning his name feels like opening a dam, my throat clenching shut. His wise and kind face, explaining to us things even as his patience worn thin. Teaching Finna how to channel mana, me how to weave bark on an arrow. Acting protectively over a pot, now stuck to his back for thirty years, waiting for him to return and continue his screaming, filled with rage or whatever it is that controls the Kertharians. It's beyond unfair. Anything the Kertharians might have done, this is worse.

I wipe the tears off my face, swallow. "No heroics, Rworg. From now on, we focus on staying alive and saving Finna. Anything else comes after, ok?"

He drops to squat next to me, puts a hand on my head. "Agreed, Folke." His voice is thick, his hand warm on top of my head. "Agreed."

I nod. I blink my eyes to clear my vision and focus on the paper again. If I look at him or Finna's stiff body, I'm going to start crying for real.

"What does it say?" Rworg asks.

"Just a moment," I say. Why did they have to write it this small? Couldn't they have just put in two papers? "This monument has been here as long as there have been records, but research on it has started only recently. They hid it using magic, but assume the protections will be failing by now."

Rworg nods along as I read.

"There are no instructions on what we should do once we're inside," I say, turning the paper around just to be sure. The other side is empty. "They tell us to disrupt the flow of mana from or into the Monolith or both. There are devices installed by Tenorsbridge that change and redirect the assumed original purpose of the Monolith. Then there are three paragraphs of theories and numbers and squiggly lines. I have no idea what any of this means. Stupid wizards."

Rworg nods, mouth pressed into a thin line. "Stupid wizards. They are the same everywhere."

We spend a moment rolling our eyes and sighing, before I realize what I was supposed to do and focus on the paper again. "Anyway, at the end they warn us of the entrance tunnel and give instructions on how to get in, hah!"

"Hah!" Rworg slaps his hand on his thigh, the sound echoing back from two directions at once.

"We have to change direction every once in a while and count how many times we go," I say and sigh a sigh of relief. Lucky that I noticed the line as soon as I did. The line proves it: we're one cycle deep now. "We could have been lost here forever. What we need to do is..."

"Well, what?" Rworg asks after a while.

"We need to do this over a hundred times?" I shout, slapping the paper with the back of my hand. "The paper tells us to set aside at least a day for this part!"

Rworg looks at me, face still. He works his mouth around, his eyebrows traveling around his brow. "Right," he says finally, and stands up.

I stand up too, running a hand through my hair. "We don't have a day! Finna is going to melt by this night."

"I know," Rworg says. "The legends say space is brittle. Time flows like water, but space breaks if you bend it."

"That makes no sense," I say, looking at the paragraph-long list of turns and ways we have to keep walking back and forth this same corridor for hours. If we don't stop to rest, we might be able to shave off a few hours. Could we try going in separate directions to test what happens? It would be interesting to see the looping happen. A scraping noise makes me look up.

"We cannot bend a corridor. But we can chip it," Rworg says. He's holding Finna by the ankle and the wrist, where there's a small gap between her arm and body. Rworg chucks her upward from the wrist and grabs hold of her other ankle as she's coming down. He spins in place, rotating on one foot. There's just enough space for Finna to spin around in the corridor.

Her head clangs into the black stone wall. Dust and pieces of rock fly in every direction. A shrapnel of stone snaps into my cheek. I'm too stunned to flinch, as it leaves a cut that starts to trickle blood.

"Normal tools will not scratch the stone of these tombs," Rworg says, as he shakes his hand in the air, grimacing. The recoil of the hit must have been quite something. Rworg grabs hold of Finna's ankle again and spins once more. Finna's face swings past my view. It moves too fast to see properly. I bet that even being dead or frozen is enough to stop her scowling about what's happening.

Rworg hits the wall again. He grits his teeth together when Finna hits the wall. His arms shake from the impact of the hit. A fist-sized chunk of the black stone falls off the wall, and I see it. Something happens. The air ripples, like a breeze that blows through the whole corridor, passing through me.

"I think it's working!" I shout.

Rworg barks a laugh and muscles Finna up on his shoulder, like the world's heaviest mallet.

"Actually, no, wait!" I shout. He ignores me and swings her down, head snapping into the intent in the wall.

Another piece, a larger one, cracks off and falls to the floor. The stone around us creaks. The floor ripples, the walls wobble. I look into the corridor, and the back wall flickers, there and here, a feeling of me being inside it.

Damn it, Rworg. Mandollel would have been so angry.

He's winding up for one more strike. "Look, a good crack," he says, swinging Finna like a battering ram, this time holding her from wrist and ankle. The top of her head clangs at the wall. The wall snaps, cracking up and down from place with the missing pieces of rock.

The stone surrounding us howls and sings, like a frozen river at spring just before the ice breaks. The bend at the end of the corridor twists, rotating sideways and flickers, closer with each halting, impossible stutter.

"Hmm," Rworg says, looking at the corridor. Even he has the decency to look worried.

"Out!" I shout.

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