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Chapter One

I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore

…or, you know, a reolia

Hannah scrunched close toout of theat the dark landscape beyond It was definitely not Mönkh Saridag

We’d been here all night, keeping a strange, silent vigil We had talked a little, but not h for her to know that Oas responsible for transporting us here And that he was dead Nothing else seeht now; at least not until we knehether or not we could ever get back home

“We aren’t sure this is the underworld though,” Hannah said after a long, bleak silence There was a hopeful, almost desperate lilt to her voice “Maybe the school just fell through a collapsed cave or soht?”

I didn’t want to point out that a collapse like that would have felt like the worst earthquake ever, or that this transportation had been coested she already knew those things but just wasn’t ready to face them yet

“I guess we’ll find out soon,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and even “If a sun even rises out there”

Myhad shown ht Now, in what seemed to be the early hours of dawn, an eye-shaped swath of black in the distance was turning gray Hannah blinked and rubbed her eyes, craning her head forward slightly I did the saht; it was entirely possible ere both hallucinating

But eren’t As the light outside got brighter, it also got way more red Super red Not like the old sci-fi interpretations of Mars—an to take shape in the deep darkness outside, and I could finally interpret what I was looking at We were in a cave, or so similar Shit, utted a mountain There were certainly plenty of those to choose froine the underworld was the same

The red light streah the eye-shaped hole in the distance illuminated the landscape inside the cave It truly was a cave, but it was so massive it almost didn’t feel like one It was so wide and tall that I couldn’t even make out all the walls, except for the one with the hole in it And the terrain around us ell…

“Oh, God,” Hannah whispered

“Yeah, I don’t think he can hear you froaze off the sight outside

Massive slags of black slate rose like jagged teeth across the blood-red horizon Bubbling black bogs spread across the land in front of us

“I saw an ie A big black splat with snaking arms It looked like death It looked just like those”

She shuddered besidehand to point into the distance “Are those trees?”

They looked ers pierced the ground, reaching up for the sky as if they wanted to claw the blood from the clotted clouds

“I hope so,” I said “If they’re not, I don’t want to knohat they are”

She was silent for a long , her brain whirring as she tried to figure out how to fix this I hadn’t known Hannah long, but we’d gotten to know each other very well, very fast because of the intense circuether will do that to people