“I don’t get it. This isn’t the Verdant. The map was supposed to show the way to the Verdant.” A sickening sensation twists in my stomach. I feel like I’m still back on the wind wagon, bucking and swaying over the hard-packed earth.

“Maybe the rest of the directions are inside,” Asher suggests. “Like you said earlier.”

I nod silently. That must be it. It has to be.

“Think we can fit through there?” He points to a small gap of darkness in the corner of the doorframe, just above the giant pile of rubble.

“Maybe. And if not, we can widen it.”

I glance back toward the wind wagon. Harlie is still wrestling with the excess rope, tying everything down in case the storm doesn’t peter out before it reaches us. Reed helps.

“Let’s get started,” I tell Asher. “They’ll catch up when they’re done.”

We climb the rubble, which is more difficult than expected because everything is half covered in dirt. It skids out beneath our heels, sending our boots sliding. More than once I nearly twist an ankle. Finally we reach the opening. I peer into the darkness, but can’t make much out. Even after Asher gets a candle going with a flint, I still can’t see more than an arm’s length ahead.

“I think I can fit if we move this one,” I say, toeing a rock the size of my head. With a good deal of grunting and huffing, we dislodge it and roll it aside. It keeps on rolling, crashing down the rubble hillside.

“Watch it!” comes Reed’s voice from below.

“No more clearing anything till we join you,” Harlie hollers. “I didn’t come all this way to be crushed by a boulder.”

But we don’t have to move anything else because the opening is now wide enough for me.

I go in headfirst, if only so I can see what I’m getting myself into. There’s a pile of rubble on this side, too. The air is stale and heavy, old. Despite the stuffiness, I hug myself, rubbing warmth into my arms.

Asher passes the candle through. “What do you see?”

The light flickers over the rocks. “I’m standing on another huge pile of rubble, same as outside.” I hold out the candle, and the flame dances over the smooth walls that surround me. There’s one overhead, too. “It’s like a chamber. And at the base of these rocks there’s . . .” A shiver sends my hair on end. “It looks like a door.”

Its face is as smooth as the walls, its frame perfectly straight. No plane can shave this evenly, no saw cut so clean. The Old World tech I’ve seen before—jars and deserted rovers and rifles—have smooth edges, organic shapes, but this . . . It’s divine, otherworldly. The work of gods.

I have a wild, terrifying thought.