Dyathne did not pull the vizard up in time.

  The stench of the Sear hit her in a merciless surge—sulphur, rotting flesh, and beneath it something wretched, sweet and floral, lingering where no life could survive. Her breath caught. She swore and yanked the black cloth over her mouth and nose, but the damage was already done. The scent clung, insinuating itself behind her eyes, down her throat.

  As bile rose, her foot slipped.

  She grasped the line as she fell. Heat tore through her worn gloves as she caught herself hard against the stone, the impact reverberating through her skull. Pain flared along her ribs when the rope went taut. For a moment she hung there, boots scraping for purchase, the fog below swallowing the sound of her breathing.

  Alone, she thought. Fool.

  They never sent anyone to walk the Sear alone. Pairs were law—more than one Ashwalker had been lost in the dense fog, even with their Nother. Some never returned. Dyathne had signed the register herself. She knew better.

  She forced her breathing to slow, counting the pulse beating behind her eyes until the dizziness eased. The vizard filtered most of the fumes, but not all of them. It never did.

  She looked down.

  She had dropped a good seven meters, and fog was already rising to meet her. The gray plane of it was dense enough to erase depth - thick enough to trick the eye into believing it could hold her. Somewhere below waited the Sear proper: a wound cut clean through the continent, held at bay by centuries of ritual and human endurance. She couldn’t see the bottom, but experience taught her she had another hour or so before she reached it.

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  The full journey would take four days if the Second portion of the Rite held. Lately, it hadn’t, not quite, not without help. The thought tightened in her chest.

  …, she did not finish the thought, instead returning to the task at hand.

  Dyathne tested the anchor again and gingerly continued her descent, hands bleeding from rope burn, head throbbing. Her strength was waning already, but she wasn’t going to reach into her pack for the meager rations she had grabbed for the trek. They had to last the journey, and when she packed in a flurry of grief and rage, she must have overlooked a bundle. Besides, there was no one to double check her packing, to double check her. Instead of eating, she took a swig from her water flask, hoping it could tide her over.

  Her boots struck solid ground some thirty minutes later. She had descended more slowly than usual due to the rope burn. And hunger. Shoving the hunger pang aside, she pulled out her armillary compass as her training dictated. Get her bearings first, everything else came second.

  Normal compasses didn’t work in the Sear, spinning madly, unable to find polar north. The metallic sphere in her hand tracked time as well as distance against a sky she wouldn’t see until she climbed out. She spun the compass key three times, long enough to reach the first waypoint to rest. It softly whirred into motion, the only sound other than her footsteps and breathing.

  Grabbing a piece of mushroom jerky from her pack, she stuffed it under the vizard and tried not to breathe in as she chewed. Eating in the Sear was a miserable experience. Everything in the Sear was a miserable experience. Dyathne strode south, following the compass hung around her neck.

  She had been walking at a steady pace for most of the day, the light threatening to wane. Fisting and relaxing her hands with each step helped the searing, bloodied skin on her palms dull to something manageable. She was considering making camp when she heard it.

  Something was moving in the fog.

  Someone else.