The dead had led her on a path that was clear of blocked passages until that point. Margot reached forward, trying to climb the pile to see if there might be a gap somewhere she could squeeze through, but no matter what angle she held her light at, she couldn’t find enough space to fit an arm, let alone her body.

Should I dig? I wish I hadn’t lost the shovel—

Cold skin grazed against her arm, and Margot flinched. The dead that had been trailing her now pressed forward, their slow, measured footsteps carrying them around Margot. She held still, arms clasped at her chest, the talisman gripped tightly, as bodies walked past her. Men and women, young and old, at least a dozen of them.

The first body stepped into the piled debris. Instead of hitting a wall like Margot had, it moved into it. The soil seemed to come alive, churning, moving, closer to a liquid than a solid as the body passed into it. Just like the earth that had swallowed Kant.

More bodies walked into the soil, their steps unhurried. It churned around them, almost bubbling.

Margot thought she understood. The dead were a part of the land. The hill had molded them, and they, in turn, molded the hill.

As the last body disappeared, Margot realized she was no longer looking at a solid wall of dirt and stone, but at a narrow passageway carved through it.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and moved forward.

The path was tighter than anything she’d gone through until then. Margot turned her body sideways, her breathing shallow, as she squeezed between the rough walls of crumbling soil. It didn’t mold itself around her like it had for the dead. Her cast scraped across it. She felt dirt tumble through her hair and under her clothes.

As she neared what looked like the channel’s end, her hip hit something solid. She struggled to angle both her head and her light to see.

A table?

The surface was wooden and far more solid than any of the collapsing structures in the passages. Margot was wedged so tightly that she didn’t have any way to climb over it. Instead, she shoved it with her hip, feeling the wood bite into her flesh with each inch it crept forward, until she had enough clearance to straighten.

It was a desk after all. An unlit lantern stood on one end. Stacks of neat paperwork on the other.

She raised her light, giving as much color to the room as possible. There were two doors, one to her left and one to her right, both locked. And ahead…

Margot’s heart felt like it was going to break. She knew this room.

The chamber.