When I moved, the pile beneath me shifted, and I slid to a packed dirt floor. Objects clattered around me as I fell: tiny weapons, like slings and daggers. Defensive charms. Child-size cloaks, bundles of food. Small stuffed toys. The belongings of past Redemptors—objects for comfort and survival. Every single one abandoned once their unfortunate owners had learned what things weigh in the Underworld.

If it weren’t for the cold, I might have added my wrapper and sandals to the pile. But though their weight hindered me, whatever lay beyond this cavern, I did not want to encounter naked. I checked my hand: Ye Eun’s dried lily blossom was still there, stuck to my palm. I peeled it off and carefully fastened it behind my ear. Before me were two long tunnels jutting in sharply different directions. Most paths in the Underworld, I knew, led more or less to the same place, though some routes were more convoluted and treacherous than others.

Third: Follow the map.

The patterns on my arms and forearms had begun to glow. A new glyph appeared—a bursting sun, symbolizing myself, pulsed in a small round chamber on the tip of my longest right finger. I scarcely needed the map, since Ye Eun had told me what to expect—but I was grateful for a real-time guide. Farther down my arm, some of the glyphs coalesced around a crosshatched square, shifting into words I could understand: BRIDGE OF THE WARLORD’S DEATHS.

Fourth, cross the bridge.

After squinting at my arm, I entered the tunnel to the right. The tiny sun glided along my skin, a gentle pulse as it mirrored my trek through the Underworld.

“Dayo, Kirah, Sanjeet.”

I wielded their names like a mantle against the cold, gritting my teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Theo. Mayazatyl. Thérèse.”

I turned a corner—and nearly pitched headfirst into a pit teeming with scorpions. I stumbled backward, then stopped, glancing at my map. The sun pulsed in the middle of a tunnel . . . and did not show a pit. I forced myself to laugh—a weak, rasping sound, but a laugh all the same.

“Zathulu!” I cried out, charging into the writhing bowl of scorpions. “Umansa!”

No creatures scattered up my limbs or stung me with pincers. And after I leapt, my feet hit bare, solid ground. The illusion had vanished the moment I challenged it. I laughed again, though it dissolved into a cough—the air still stank of death.

“Emeronya,” I sang, letting my voice echo off the sickly green stalactite. “Kameron. Ai Ling . . .”

I cycled through all my original siblings, and the vassal rulers too, until my tongue ran dry, blending the consonants together. How long had I been walking now? A day? Two?

My muscles ached, as though I had crossed a continent, but that meant little. My body seemed suspended—I was frozen and exhausted, but not thirsty or hungry. Even without my Raybearer immunities, as a living soul, I could not die in the Underworld unless I wished to—so I could not starve or faint of dehydration. Without such markers, however, measuring time was impossible. Ye Eun had warned me not to sleep—staying still would make me even colder, and every time I closed my eyes, it would grow harder to open them.