like it will be my last before I plummet down into the abyss. With it comes a strange scent, one that I hardly recognize at first. It is unpleasant, but once I get accustomed to it, it becomes less potent and begins to smell almost like something is burning.
Light starts to pour into the canyon as the minutes pass, faintly at first but then brightly enough that I am able to see beyond the edges of the glow my torch provides. Moments later, the silhouette of something appears ahead, stretching across the canyon in a large mass.
It takes a little bit for me to recognize what it could be, but once I am close, there is no mistaking it. It is a bridge, and not a natural one like the many I've already come across. It was built by people, perhaps the same people who once filled the many rooms and halls of this underground world with life.
As I approach it, I reflect on how the world I have known has transformed so much in the past few days. The abandoned structure by the lake. The writings in the caverns and halls. This impressive structure that spans hundreds of feet across the endless gulf below. Why are the people in Kalepo kept in such ignorance to these things, to the world they live in?
The paper tells me to cross the bridge, but now that I stand before it, I am tempted to go another way. The fears I previously had about the dangers around me are gone, replaced by curiosity and wonder. If this bridge is taking me to some forgotten path that descends into the Ethereal Plains, it might also be taking me away from the ruins of some forgotten civilization. I want to know why its existence remains a guarded secret, one my father kept even from me.
I take a moment to rest and consider what I should do, setting my pack down with the intent of pulling out something to snack on, but my focus changes the moment I remove the animal-skin pouch. I stare at it, mesmerized by its apparent importance in whatever my father had planned.
Seconds later, I hear something in the distance echoing off of the canyon walls. It is weak at first, so weak that I deem it the workings of my paranoid imagination, but it steadily grows into a rumble that I can no longer ignore. Something is headed this way, something big and imposing. I hastily pack my things and run across the bridge, forgetting about my ambitions for exploration. My father sent me this way with a specific purpose, and that's where my focus needs to be.
Only two sets of instructions remain on the paper. The first is to enter a tunnel at the far side of the bridge and reach its end, about a mile and a half down. The second is to open a box at a cliff there and use what's inside to descend the stairs, burning the rope of the stairway once I reach the bottom.
I place the paper back into my pocket and sprint as fast as I can down the hallway. The heaviness of my pack makes this impossibly exhausting, but the bellow of something giving chase behind me helps me find the strength to keep going. My legs burn as I gasp to get enough air, though my breaths hardly satisfy as I become completely sapped of energy.
Stray beams of light begin pouring in from cracks in the rock as the end of the tunnel appears in the distance, encouraging me to move even more swiftly. A relieved smile stretches across my face, though my heart remains nervous at the loud thumping of whatever pursues me. My only hope is that it will not continue chasing me once I've reached the stairs.
The blinding sunlight overwhelms me once I completely emerge from the darkness. I had expected it to be dawn or early morning, but based on how bright it is, it must be nearly midday. The mist of the plains shines below me with a brilliant whiteness, especially with how close it is. The cliff I find myself at sits just above its top, closer than I've ever been. I must have descended several thousands of feet in the caves.
The noise behind me is much weaker than it was before, but this does little to comfort me. My guess is that the openness of the plains is muffling it. I need to get down the stairs as quickly as I can, but there is a problem. There are no stairs.
I can see where they used to trail down the mountainside, disappearing into the mist below, but they appear to have been chiseled completely away, leaving a smooth surface that would be suicide for me to try and slide down. I am trapped, that is unless there is something else inside the box to carry me down.
The box is dark and made of a strange metal. I rush over to it, finding that it is latched shut by a large lock. I quickly remove my pack and search for the key, which I had foolishly placed near the bottom. As I pull it out, I nearly fumble it and drop it over the edge, but I recover and jam it into the mechanism, twisting it and swinging the lid to the container open.
Inside is nothing but some lengths of rope and a harness. I glance back toward the edge of the cliff, where three metal anchors have been embedded into the rock. My heart sinks. The rope is the stairway. I am going to have to repel down the mountain. My eyes shift to the tunnel as I wonder if I'll have enough time to prepare the rope and the harness, but the bellowing from inside has stopped, replaced by the sound of howling wind against the glaciered mountainside.
My attention returns to the harness in the box, which I strap on with ease, having been well versed on how to use one. Cassandra and Helena taught me when I was young. There are many rock walls near the edges of the plateau around Kalepo, and those brave enough climb up and down them for sport. Helena was one such person. Cassandra and I would go and watch her. She was so spritely and strong that even most of the boys couldn't move as quickly as she could. Competitions would sometimes spring up in the moment, and Helena won many of them. I was so proud to have her as my sister.
So was Cassandra, though she would often tease her that she would need such skills to survive in exile once father was gone. Helena took no offense to this, which always made me feel peaceful about what was to come. It was as though the idea didn't bother either of them, like there was some plan in place that I wasn't yet old enough to know. It hurts to think about what could have been had Mariam never been born.
Helena eventually convinced Cassandra to give it a shot herself, and she liked it so much that she encouraged me to do the same. I was still pretty young, so Helena was there below me every step of the way. No matter how high I got, I never felt like I was going to fall. How I wish she were here with me now.
Once I have the harness just the way I like it, I take one of the long strands of rope and loop it through it, tying one end to an anchor and letting the other end fall over the edge. It is made of a strange material, one lighter and much more colorful than any rope I've ever seen.
I tug against the end of the rope tied to the anchor, nervously glancing over the ledge. This is the point of no return, and it feels surreal. I might never see the light of the blue sun or the stars again once I am down in the fog of the plains. That is assuming that nothing goes wrong with this descent.
My breathing speeds up, and I hesitate to make the first step back. I instead reexamine my pack to make sure that it is secure and then look at the box. With more rope inside, there is no reason to not tie a second line, just in case.
I step over to grab another colored length and hurriedly tie a strong, thick knot onto a different anchor than the first. I then toss it over the edge. A loud noise thunders from the cave once more, almost like a roar, but one too loud to be a beast, as though the mountain itself is shouting at me.
That is the only prodding I need. With all of my gear firmly in place, I hold to the two ropes and launch myself backwards off of the cliff. The rush of cold wind brushes by me up toward the sky as I quickly descend, eager to get away from danger and harm.
My uncovered hands become redder and number with each downward step I take. My right hand starts to sting after a while, so badly that I have to stop at one point and rub it so that I can get some feeling back into it. As I pause, I glance up and admire the great distance I've already traveled, and then down at the fog now only a dozen more feet below.
An unexpected feeling of emptiness comes over me. This is goodbye to everything I've ever known. Even though it has been many days since I was cast out of the city, going back always somehow felt like a possibili
ty, albeit an unlikely one. That hope is about to become a distant dream. I can't imagine how I'll ever get back up this mountainside. Then again, I still don't know where my father's plan goes from here.
All I know is that I must find some woman named Eliana and give her the animal-skin pouch. There are no instructions beyond that, not even a hint of guidance. I don't know what direction I'm supposed to go when I reach the bottom. How is this ever supposed to work if I don't even know that?
"Stop it," I scold myself.
I need to take this one step at a time. My father trusted me to come this far, and I haven't disappointed him. If he didn't give any instructions beyond what I have, it means that he trusted that I would be able to make it the rest of the way on my own. Or even better, the way will be much more obvious from here.
This encourages me, and I continue my descent. The fog below slowly envelopes me as I step into it. It reminds me a lot of the dense clouds that sometimes settle over the plateau and completely immerse Kalepo in grey, though these clouds are unusually warm, like they have risen from boiling water, or even vents of lava like those that heat the springs near Kalepo's eastern cliffs.
The possibility that the Ethereal Plains are actually