But Zofia did not hear what she said. The guard shoved her forward.

“No dallying!” called Ruslan, climbing the steps. He looked over his shoulder, grinning and waving his knife. “For every hesitation, I’ll take a finger!”

Zofia stepped onto the temple. Focus, she told herself. One step at a time.

That was all she could do now.

Up close, the steps were even larger than she had imagined. They stretched at least fifteen meters wide on either side, and required a good four paces forward before she reached the ledge to climb the next step. She made her way slowly, her heartbeat loud in her ears as she tuned out the world around her.

Zofia had just counted her twentieth step when the air around them rippled. The warm glow off the mud-baked bricks disappeared. Cold invaded the space around her. A high-pitched hum echoed in her ears.

Zofia shook her head, as if she could manage to dislodge the sound. The dagger at her back nicked her skin and she winced. When she looked down, she froze.

“What is that?” asked Ruslan, whirling around.

Black liquid beaded on the stone steps. Zofia looked up, managing to turn her head and finally catch sight of Laila standing beside her before the world exploded into thick, choking shadows.

Zofia stumbled back, losing her footing. The frenzied humming had built into a screaming wind in her ears. Something sharp slashed against her thigh. Dimly, Zofia thought she heard Ruslan’s dagger clattering to the stone. Zofia clawed to reach a step, but only air and shadows met her hands.

Zofia squeezed her eyes shut.

One. Two. Three.

She opened them, but the dark hadn’t faded.

Four. Five. Six.

Zofia turned her head, but the shadows had become thick and impenetrable. She might as well have been all alone. Inky shadows swirled around her.

Zofia fought back a sob, forcing her mind to ordered, neat things like numbers. She raced through multiples of seventeen as she fumbled in the dark, stretching her hands out before her—

Seventeen, thirty-four, fifty-one …

She tried to take a step forward, tripped, and banged her knees against something hard and rough. A sob caught in her throat. Her hands shook as she felt her way around, only for something wet and sticky to hit her fingers. Zofia clutched her fingers to her chest, curling around herself and counting her breaths the way her parents had taught her to do when she was young and terrified.

But it wasn’t working.

She couldn’t scream or sob. She couldn’t see a way out, and soon the darkness became more than something staring at her from the outside. She could feel it inside her too.

Zofia blinked and felt Hela’s last letter slipping from her fingers and vanishing into the murky lagoons of Venice. She remembered her classmates locking her in the classroom, the shrieks that she was nothing more than a crazy Jew, the fear that there were too many unknowns in the world and she would never find her way in the dark.