Tightening my grip on the torch, I turned the corner and entered a windowless stairwell.
The spike in confidence from seeing my ex destroyed and begging pushed me on, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last.
Already, the adrenaline was waning, turning jagged and sharp. By the time I reached the next landing, it had turned on me completely—a stabbing pain in my stomach.
The second floor was an exact replica of the first. A dozen glacial cells, wet cobblestone, evil in the air.
On my left, a bulky silhouette prowled the length of its chamber. In the bleak light I swore I caught a glimpse of a flowy lion’s mane, but there were too many eyes and one set too many legs and an irregular shape jutting out of their back that resembled wings.
No good would come of investigating the cells and their prisoners. I’d learned that lesson.
I hurried to the next level, flinching at the sound of my own footsteps.
Every few breaths, Ryder screamed my name, his cries getting fainter, hoarser, the deeper I went.
By the time I reached the fifth floor, the stairs were so eroded they resembled slippery ramps. The fire sputtered.
Stone crumbled beneath my damp soles, and ice crept across the floors, the bars, covering every cell with a thin, frozen film.
But it was the silence—a heavy, haunting presence—that made my skin crawl. At every turn, there it was, tickling my ear, weighing on my shoulders, touching me, even though I knew nothing was there.
I cupped a hand over my mouth and huffed out air, trying to contain the warmth against my numb lips. My shoes were a sopping mess, the liquid from the stagnant puddles seeping into the soles, drenching my socks. Freezing cold.
I finally reached the sixth floor.
Down here, I was way too scared to shine the light anywhere but directly in front of me. I didn’t need to see the cells, or the walls, or what lay beyond them—I just needed to find the hole, slip down, ask the Coffin Seeker some questions, then get the fuck out of there.
It was so pitch-black, even the fire seemed to be afraid, shrinking in on itself.
Towards the end of the corridor, where the floors above had sloped to a lower level, there was a break in the ground. A hole. One that required me to climb straight down, because as the last and final level, it wasn’t accessible by the main stairs.
Just as Flóki had said it would be.
I crept closer. Smeared letters on the wall spelled out Dauða manna svæði, then beneath it, Dead Man’s Zone. Other messages in Icelandic had been scribbled in the same ashy ink alongside another language I couldn’t place.
With a big inhale that still left me feeling breathless, I set the torch next to the rim before lowering myself. I placed one foot on a rusty rung, grabbed the light, and descended into the darkness.
The metal ladder shook under me. If I had any intention of making a stealthy entrance, it was completely shot. Even Ryder probably heard me, all those levels above. I imagined him gnashing his teeth, struggling against the bars at the idea of me coming down here.
The heat of that, at least, was a welcome flash of warmth.
Because what came next was numbing fear.
My staccato exhales echoed off the stone chute, blackness above and below. If I reached out—if I moved my head—I would strike stone.
It didn’t feel real, like I was suspended in time—like I was entering a different reality.
I finally broke out of the tight, narrow space into a circular room, where the ladder stopped a few feet shy of the ground.
Even though my hands trembled, I released their grip and landed with a splash in a small pool. More mystery liquid, and bone-chillingly cold.
I held up the fire, the flames shrunken to half their original size.
Cringing, I looked around.
There were no cells here, just empty halls and thick metal plates in the ground—if this had ever been anything remotely resembling a prison, it was nothing more than crushed walls and piles of mildewed wood in the corners now.
Enormous slabs of ice jutted out of the ceiling, the undersides dripping an endless stream of water onto the floor. Brick arches crumbled between them, bearing the weight of the six levels above. No wonder they referred to this place as the Dead Man’s Zone—the entire dungeon had been carved into a glacier, and this was right below. If the ice so much as shifted, whoever was in the basement was done for.
