A carriage waited outside.

  Its frame, made of blackened wood painted to a dull, unnatural sheen, did not reflect the dim morning light as it should. Instead, it seemed to drink up the glow, swallowing it whole, absorbing it into its surface like a thing that had no business existing in the world of men.

  The wheels, caked in thick, wet mud, sat motionless in the road, though they had not turned, had not rolled through any dirt, had not been led by any driver along the path that had brought them here. The horses - if you could call them that - stood rigid in their harnesses, their heads too high, their eyes too still, their hooves half sunk into the ground, as if they had not been brought here at all, but had grown out of the earth itself.

  And at the front, on the driver's seat, sat a figure wrapped in dark cloth, his face hidden in the shadow of a broad-brimmed hat, his hands resting idly at his sides. He did not move. He was not breathing. He simply waited.

  Lea did not want to go in. But there had never been a choice. Sandra swallowed hard beside her, her little fingers curled into the fabric of Lea's coat, clinging to her like an anchor, her voice barely above a whisper. "Do we have to?"

  Lea exhaled slowly, drawing the breath deep into her lungs, pushing back the coiling fear that lay heavy in her stomach. Then she turned to Gemini. "If we don't, what happens?" Gemini's expression did not change, her lips curling slightly at the corners. Not wide. Not mocking. Just certain. "We don't get to choose what they take." Lea's jaw tightened. Her stomach twisted. She grabbed Sandra's hand and pulled her forward. Gemini followed without hesitation.

  The driver did not acknowledge them as they climbed into the carriage, did not turn his head, and did not shift the reins. The moment the door swung shut, sealing them inside, Lea felt it. The drop.

  It was not motion. The carriage didn't lurch forward, didn't clatter over uneven roads, didn't shake with the weight of the wheels against the dirt. It just fell. Not down, not forward, not in any direction Lea could name. It was as if the ground beneath them had been cut away as if they had been severed from the world above and sent tumbling into something deeper, something darker, something they were not meant to reach.

  Sandra gasped, her fingers clutching Lea's arm tighter, her eyes darting wildly to the window. "It's not moving." She was right. The carriage was eerily still. And yet - Black Hollow was gone. The world outside had unraveled, the town swallowed by a stretch of endless, mist-shrouded road where the trees did not sway, where the sky sat thick and swollen with colors that did not belong. Time did not pass. It folded.

  Gemini sighed and leaned back in the seat, her voice soft, almost satisfied. "Almost there." Lea's fingers twitched to the knife at her belt.

  Because she understood now.

  They weren't going somewhere else. They were going down. The descent was silent. Timeless. The road did not stretch out in front of them; it just was, winding in on itself, twisting in ways that should not have been possible, stretching into an eternity that should not have fit into the narrow space of the carriage window. Then-without warning-the carriage stopped.

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  Not with a jerk. Not with the creak of wooden wheels hitting stone. It just stopped. Sandra inhaled sharply. "Where are we?" Lea reached for the doorknob.

  It was wet under her fingers. Cold - not the chill of the morning air, not the dampness of rain-soaked wood, but something else. Something deeper. The metal twisted slightly under her grip. The door swung open.

  The air hit her first.

  Heavy. Damp. Thick with the scent of salt and earth, of old wood and older blood. It clung to her skin, her lungs, sinking deep into the spaces between her ribs.

  The ground beneath them was uneven, and rough, not like stone, but like something carved from the ribs of a giant. They had stopped in front of an arch - massive, its frame forged of black stone, carved into jagged points, its surface etched with symbols older than any language Lea had ever known. They curled and twisted like veins, like roots, wrapping around the entrance as if trying to hold something inside.

  Above the arch, in letters too sharp to have been carved by human hands, was a phrase.

  THE MARKET NEVER CLOSES.

  Lea's stomach twisted. The driver did not move. He just waited as Gemini got out first. Sandra hesitated. Lea felt her fingers twitch against her coat, but she did not move. Did not run. Because there was nowhere to run. Lea stepped onto the stone. And the arch swallowed her whole.

  The moment Lea crossed the threshold, the air thickened. It pressed against her skin, curled into her clothes like a damp cloth, like unseen fingers running through her hair, along the edges of her ribs. The light inside flickered - wrongly. Not from fire. Not from lanterns. But from something else. Something alive.

  The tunnel widened. And they stepped through. The marketplace stretched before them.

  A sprawling bazaar, vast and endless, folding into itself in ways that defied reason, ways that should not have fit within the walls of the cave. Wooden stalls lined the aisles, but they sold no food, no silks or spices. Their shelves were stacked with jars of things that moved, with trinkets that whispered, with books that shuddered at the sight of them.

  Cages rattled.

  The air pulsed with low, wet voices, exchanged in tongues Lea did not recognize. Sandra stiffened. Lea followed her gaze. The figures behind the stalls. The things they sold.

  Not all of them were human. A woman with no mouth but six blinking eyes ran her fingers over a bundle of yellowed teeth, her long nails clicking against them like counting coins. A child with twisted limbs and too many joints held up a glass vial, a small, flickering shadow trapped inside. The vendor, a tall man wrapped in waxy black cloth, nodded in agreement. A pale figure sat cross-legged behind a table covered with red string and severed fingers. He was knitting something - something that twitched.

  Sandra's grip tightened. Her voice was barely a whisper. "What are they selling?" Gemini hummed, tilting her head. "Everything."

  And the market noticed them. Heads turned. Eyes - too many, too few, some stolen from places they did not belong - watched them move.

  Ahead, a figure in a deep black hood waited. Lea's pulse quickened. She had seen men like this before. Not bartering. Not begging. Not stealing. Just taking. Sandra's breath quickened.

  The stalls around her fell silent. The whispering vendors, the buyers with too many teeth, and the cages rattling with things that shouldn't exist all fell silent. Because the market was no longer watching them. It was watching him. The figure raised a hand. Not at Sandra. Toward Gemini. Lea moved quickly. Instinctively.

  She stepped between them. The air shifted. The shape did not lower its hand. An even trade. Lea's voice was cold. Absolute. "No." A silence. Gemini laughed. Softly and sweetly. She leaned in, her breath warm against Lea's skin. And whispered:

  "Why do you always think you get to choose?"