It fell, turning slowly end over end and shedding sparks. Its light splashed across crevasse walls and fell with it, a ball of illumination that grew smaller as it went deeper. Vince expected the torch to strike bottom, break apart on a rocky floor or extinguish in an underground stream, but it simply kept falling until it was little more than a speck of light, a descending star that then became something he wasn’t sure he could see at all.

“How far?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Dastion said. “I’ve gone deeper than we are now, and that’s where I found what I have to show you. But down there...” He shrugged. “I’m fascinated by it, but afraid as well.”

“You don’t seem like someone who’d be afraid,” Shashahanna said, her deep voice echoing.

“You don’t know me,” Dastion said. “Neither of you do. Come on, we’re almost there.”

They left the crevasse behind and entered another series of tunnels. Skirting an underground pool, Shashahanna handed Vince her torch and slipped into the waters with hardly a ripple. He and Dastion edged around the pool, and as she emerged on the far side, water slipping from her body, her eyes were wide. She breathed in a chestful of air and exhaled slowly.

“So old,” she said. “Older than anywhere I’ve swum before.”

“How can this place be older than anywhere else?” Vince asked.

“I didn’t dig all these tunnels, human,” Dastion said. “I find the way, but sometimes the way is here before me.”

“So old,” Shashahanna whispered again, moving ahead of them away from the pool. She did not once look back.

During Vince’s time here days and seasons had seemed to change at random. Down in the darkness it was even harder to follow the passage of time. He wondered how Dastion managed, but then realised he did not need to. For the dwarf, being down here was time on his own, and day or night, winter or summer, did not matter.

“We’re close,” Dastion said. “We’ll wait here. Just for a while.”

Vince couldn’t tell if the dwarf was tired or scared, or maybe both.

“We don’t have time to wait,” he said.

“Just while I tell you what I found, because if I’m right, what’s around the corner might be dangerous.”

“So tell us,” Shashahanna said.

“I found... a crack in the world.”

Vince thought back to the crevasse, a few minutes or an hour earlier. He wondered if his torch was still falling.