I stand atop the crest of one of the flowing hills dotting the snowfield we've been crossing for the past hour, trying to gauge how much progress we've made. We've put the forest far behind us by this point, and Idofront has grown in size. I can only see one curving side of it, the rest hidden by the black water and ridges looming over it.

   I again find myself growing transfixed looking at Idofront. It baffles me that something so concrete exists in this place, that it hasn't fallen to ruin like every other structure I've seen in the Abyss. No, it can't be that old, people that long ago couldn't have constructed something so massive and complex. It makes my head spin as much as the building itself.

   "How's it lookin', kid?" Melva calls up to me, and I'm brought out of my thoughts. I skid down the hill, stumbling to regain my balance when I reach the bottom.

   "Well, we're definitely closer," I say. "You were a little off on your guess; it might be another mile or so."

   Melva sighs in exasperation. "It's not like I'm used to guessin' horizontal distances. A couple hundred yards? Yeah, but not miles. This place is like turnin' the Third Layer on its side."

   "It's fine, I likely wouldn't have been able to guess it accurately either, that's just my estimation." I hand the binoculars back to her. "The terrain seems to stay the same the rest of the way there, too. I don't know whether that's good or bad, though."

   "Things can see us better, but we can see 'em too. We just gotta make sure we're the ones that get the drop on anythin'," Melva says matter-of-factly. A familiar trill sounds overhead, and we look up to see another of those moth owls flying above us. It doesn't acknowledge us, thankfully so since the talons on it look nasty.

   "Icetrail Gliders," I say wistfully, and Melva arches a brow. "I-I couldn't help it, I needed to name something else down here. Those feathers on its tail look like trails of snow when the wind picks it up and blows it around in whirlwinds."

   "An' where does the 'Glider' part come in?" Melva asks.

   I point up to the bird soaring away towards Idofront. "Look, how many times does it flap its wings?" We both watch it until it vanishes, me counting the seconds under my breath, and Melva looks surprised. "See? None, and we were watching it for about four minutes. At least it was roughly that. They glide more than they flap, hence the name."

   Melva holds up her hands, shaking her head. "Okay, fine, I get it, Seeker. Ya sought the damn bird and exuded your knowledge about it."

   Seeker? Oh...

   "But fine, it'll take longer to get there. Let's just hurry in case snowstorms are a thing 'ere, which I can only guess so with all the snow." That just makes me wonder how big this cavern is that it would have its own weather patterns, but this isn't the time to think about that.

   Our trek through the snowfield hasn't been the most taxing compared to the other terrain we've faced, but it still doesn't mean we've let our guard down. Anything could be hiding around these hills, watching us struggle through the calf-high snow.

   "This reminds me of something," I start. "There was this large field behind my home city with some trees clustered right at the base of the mountains that bordered us, and the terrain was similar to this. Addy and I would always go running through the field after a fresh snowfall, making sure we made all the snowmen and snow angels we wanted before the other kids came through the field. I find it strange now how we always acted so possessive over fresh snowfall when it happened on a near-weekly basis."

   "Childhood whimsy, I dunno." Melva shrugs. "But snowmen sound fun. I didn't even know what snow was until I was fifteen an' Bellan told me 'bout it. Somehow, I didn't think it'd be so cold even though it's literally frozen water."

   I can't help but laugh a bit at that. "I feel like the only way someone can be really used to snow and the cold is if they've grown up in it. It's the same with me and the heat, and I was glad Orth had such a temperate climate."

   "Hopefully it's a bit warmer further down," Melva says, and I nod. If people were able to build a city like the one that supposedly exists on the Sixth Layer, then the climate must be more moderate than the Fourth and Fifth layers.

   We soon start leaving the hills behind us, coming out onto a stretch of pure, open snowfield with mostly flat terrain, save for a few dips and rises in the snow. Somehow, scraggly grasses grow here, reaching up through the snow in clusters of dull yellow and brown reeds that remind me of flax, save for the faded purple berries growing along the stalks.

   Melva goes up to one of these plants and crouches down to examine the berries. "Kinda looks like a blackberry, but I ain't touchin' it."

   "They could be like the winterberries we had back home," I say. "Only birds ate them, however."

   "That clinches it even more then, don't it?" She stands and rotates her shoulders before looking back at me. "At least we're gettin' close now." She's thankfully right, though now that we're coming closer, I'm starting to see that the land doesn't touch the building where we're approaching it from, so we might have to walk around it to find a proper entrance. That's something for us to worry about when we get there, though.

   With our goal clearly in sight across the field, we pick up our pace a little here, though we stay below a jog. My tailbone still aches too much to run, not to mention we need to conserve our energy and heat. I lean down and scoop up a handful of snow, popping it in my mouth and letting it melt. It soothes my throat, raw from breathing through both it and my nose. I can't believe I didn't think to bring a scarf...

   The more we progress, the thicker the reeds get with the snow becoming looser underfoot. Small clouds of snow fly up around us in puffs that get caught in the breeze and sting our faces. I'm shocked that we just don't sink down all the way, that the snow even has integrity. Paranoia starts to creep up on me again, and I find myself doing double-takes at the clusters of reeds. They're only swaying with the wind, why do I think it's something else?

   As I reach down for another handful of snow, Melva heads out a few paces in front of me. But then she screams, and my heart drops into my stomach. I jolt up and look to see my mentor in the ground, scrambling for purchase at the edge of a pit that seems to have opened up out of nowhere. I plant my feet and grab her arms, using my weight to yank her from the pit and pull her down to the ground with me.

   "Wh-what the hell was that?" she cries in a voice that breaks halfway through. "The damn ground just fell out from under me!"

   "I don't..." I trail off as I crawl towards the edge of the pit and look down into it. It's about three feet across but easily six feet deep. "Wait, I've seen something like this before. If snow falls and piles up a certain way, it can create covers over openings in the ground. We used to hunt for rabbits back home, and we'd have to mark the warrens during summer so the snowfall wouldn't hide them from us."

   Melva still looks frozen with shock, but she nods. "Okay... Damn, that about gave me a heart attack."

   "I wouldn't have blamed you if you had one," I mutter. At the pit's bottom, there's a dark opening on one of the walls, looking like a hollow or tunnel of some sort. It looks like... the entrance to a warren? It reminds me of a rabbit warren but for a much larger creature than a rabbit. The hole looks like it could accommodate a bobcat or even a wolf. Is this an air vent for an underground tunnel system?

   "Kid!"

   My head snaps up, and Melva's rocketing to her feet, pulling out her machete. My heart jolts, and my gaze follows hers. I can't tell what she's looking at for a moment, but then I see it: a pair of icy blue eyes in the snow a couple yards from us. I squint but can't make out a body. Then the creature moves, its tail flicking before a cluster of reeds. Its fur is snow-white with dapples of gray, blending in perfectly with the snow. It then rises, and I can make out it's a wolf-like creature with long fur that's dusted in snow, its paws oversized like a lynx's. Even its nose looks like a larger splotch of gray, almost unmistakable from a rock on the ground. My heart drops.

   "Back the hell up," Melva growls at the canine. It starts to growl in turn, gray lips peeling back to reveal long, sharp teeth as its breaths begin to mist the air around it. With my eyes still on it, trying to maintain my composure, I slowly stand as well. The canine seems to reel back a bit when it sees my full stature, but that seems to present a challenge for it as it then growls louder, and its ears flatten to the sides of its head. "I said... back... up!" Melva raises her machete and flares her cloak out to her sides, trying to make herself look bigger. The canine again hesitates.

   While this occurs, I glance to my right, and I freeze when I see a second pair of eyes a bit closer than where the first canine was hiding. Then another pair opens up adjacent to the second canine, and more and more. My heart pounds out of my chest as dread overtakes me. There have to be at least six of these wolf-like creatures, and we hadn't seen any of them sneaking up on us.

   "Melva..." I say as loudly as I dare, and she notices them as well. But her looking away seems to be the trigger, and the first canine lunges at her. Reflex alone drives me here, and I bring my pickaxe around to knock the canine away and gouge a hole in its side. I hardly have time to comprehend what I just did before the others spring, but Melva blows her whistle with all her strength. They stop and cower back in pain, and we take the chance to run for our lives again.

   Right from the start, I know we can't outrun these things. I've never heard of a person outrunning a wolf, and those weren't wolves of the Abyss hardened by the harshness of the Fifth Layer. Still, we run, because some tiny bit of hope flares in us that somehow, some way, we can find a way out of this. And I can't stand the thought of being torn apart, not yet. That terror keeps my pain away, and the gore on my pickaxe doesn't matter to me.

   Every step we take is more like a leap, trying to not sink into the snow too deeply and have it blow up in our faces and blind us. As we gasp and heave with the strain of forcing ourselves through the snow and reeds, there's hardly any sound behind us. Even so, we know the canines are there, the sense of eyes boring into one's back is unmistakable.

   Melva's head snaps to my left, and her eyes widen. "Watch out!" She suddenly grabs me and yanks me to the right a few seconds before something that looks like a cloud of snow careens in around my blind spot. Blue eyes flash in the cloud, and it makes sense. The snow is flying from the canines' fur, shrouding them in a cloud of powder snow that would make them seem like another billowing plume in a snowstorm as they run. But before it can jump at me, we're running again... but not towards Idofront. We're running alongside it now, and we can't hope to reorient ourselves without the canine to my left catching us.

   The canine to my left gradually comes more into view as it tries to loop around to our front. A second joins it, making us change course even more so we're almost running away from Idofront at this point. Nausea swells in me as it becomes obvious what these creatures are trying to accomplish.

   They're herding us, dammit! I scream internally. But there's nothing we can do about it, not without meeting flesh-rending fangs. I don't need to ask what they're herding us towards, because it reveals itself a few moments later as the snow falls away from under our feet, and we fall into a pit twice as big as the last.

   I hit the ground back-first, the wind and then some being slammed out of me. All I can grasp in my shock and spiraling vision is Melva's loud shout and an onslaught of expletives.

   The canines look down from the top of the pit eight feet above us, yipping and howling down into it. A few moments later, loud scuffling can be heard around us, and Melva again swears loudly as she yanks me up to sit. Everything spins sickeningly, but I can still make out more of the creatures in the tunneled holes in the sides of the pit. These aren't just air vents, they're traps for prey. As they lunge at us, we've become their kill for the day.

   Fangs tear into my arms and leg, teeth scraping my prosthetic, and I scream and thrash. I can't reach for my pick, not even my knife. I manage to jab one in the eye with my elbow, but another takes its place. The stench of blood fills the air almost immediately, mine and Melva's screams overpowering the satisfied growls of the canines. I can't even think about how this is the end as one sinks its teeth into my neck, but then they stop as the loud yowls of dogs in pain pierces the air at the top of the pit.

   I hazily watch in disbelief as a plume of flame scores across the top of the pit, and the canines whimper and flee. The ones in the pit do as well, releasing us and running. I slump to the ground, shuddering from the agony piercing every part of me. All I can glimpse on my limbs are teeth marks; no chunks have been torn away, but that doesn't stop the blood.

   "L-Len... are you... alive?" Melva wheezes. I can only release a strangled sound, and that's enough for her. "My a-ankle... I landed on it..." I try to sift through my shock to properly respond, but then something, someone, leans over the pit.

   I at first hesitate whether what's looking down at us is human or machine, but then it lowers a rope down into the pit with the fluidity only a human can. They wear a black mask that encloses their head like a helmet with small, horn-like protrusions that jut out at the sides. It covers their entire face with no eye or mouth holes whatsoever, and a glowing blue line carves around its edges before slicing vertically down its center.

   "Can you climb?" The voice is surely the masked person's, a man's that sounds a bit muffled with a strange tint to it, as if he's speaking through a radio. He also sounds incredibly tired, his voice hollow with no real emotion.

   Melva doesn't speak up, so I do instead. "I-I don't know," I manage to wheeze, hardly having the strength to sit up again. My limbs and tailbone protest awfully as I do this.

   "Tie it around yourselves..." the man says before pulling away from the pit. A second rope is lowered down to us, both looking like thick cable instead of standard rope. They're incredibly well-made.

   "I can tie it, kid," Melva says, pushing herself up. It seems she's been bitten twice on one arm and once on her other, her legs having been bitten a couple times as well. She grins weakly when she sees me and rasps out a laugh. "Y-ya look like hell, but I know I'm the same." She takes hold of one of the ropes and hands it to me before taking the second. We both knot them around our torsos under our arms, and Melva calls out for our rescuers to haul us up. I'm astonished at whoever manages to pull me, though it seems there's more than one person.

   We're pulled to the top of the pit and out onto the snowfield, and we can fully see who saved us. There's six of them, varying in height and build, but they're all masked and draped in black. Everything from their jackets, coats, undershirts, pants, boots, gloves, and their whistles are black, save for the glowing blue lines across their masks. These lines don't form any letters I recognize or indicate a specific pattern, so their purpose confuses me greatly. And there are still no eye or mouth holes; how they can even see is baffling.

   I cautiously watch one of the masked Delvers drop their backpack and rifle through it, only to grow relieved as they pull out thick spools of bandages. "Th-thank you," I say with a wince as they tie the bandages around my wounds. I've been bitten twice on my left leg and once on my right, my arms bearing double the wounds each. I relax a bit more when my neck's wrapped up, though thankfully the canine hadn't bitten too deeply into it before we were saved.

   "Proper treatment will come later... Transportation matters more," the Delver tending to me says, working methodically until the blood flow has been stifled.

   "It's too dangerous to treat out here..." another Delver says.

   "Yes, dangerous," the one tending to Melva echos.

   "Out here... very dangerous," yet another says. I'm unsettled by this but don't say anything.

   Melva gives our rescuers a once-over, arching a brow. "So who the hell are all o' ya? You're wearin' uniforms but they ain't Orth delvin' gear. Ya work for Bondrewd?" A few of the Delvers nod in response.

   "The Sovereign of Dawn is currently attending to research at our base of operations..." the Delver by me says. "He is not accepting visitors..."

   I frown. "Then what do you mean by transportation and proper treatment if we're not welcome at your base?" The Delver lifts a finger and points to Aedia.

   "Your worth..."

   I freeze completely. My heart plummets into my stomach, eyes widening as it again feels like the air has been driven from me again. Around me, the other Delvers repeat the words the first spoke in a monotone echo. "Your worth, worth, your worth..."

   "Wh-what are you talking about?" I ask faintly.

   "Your Worth: the Life Reverberating Stone..." the first Delver says. "You are among the Abyss' chosen, bestowed one of many blessings. The Sovereign of Dawn will want to see this for himself..." I can sense Melva looking at me while the masked Delver speaks, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see some concern on her face.

   "Hey, it works out since we were on our way there anyways," she tells the Delvers. "We're headin' to the Sixth Layer, but we didn't know where to start lookin' for a way down. We thought we could find some information at your base."

   The Delver tending to me tilts his head a little. "The vessel... Yes..." He then gets to his feet, looking out past us into the snowfield. "Conversation is no longer safe... The Frostbite Runners are regrouping. We will assist you if you're incapable of walking."

   "I-I believe I can," I say, but Melva shakes her head.

   "Yeah... I can't," she hisses through a scowl. My heart aches in sympathy as I get to my feet with some help. Of course my prosthetic holds strong, though the bites on my leg flare up with pain. Still, if it means Melva gets all the help, I can manage it.

   "We will provide assistance," the leading Delver says, the others echoing his words. I turn my gaze to Idofront, looming in the near distance. Even if we're battered and bleeding, at least we'll be getting where we wanted to go. Along with that, I may finally be getting some answers about what happened to Aedia.

   Once we arrive at the shoreline, we walk a short distance around the outside of Idofront before arriving at a stone pier of sorts that reaches out to Idofront. The pier seems newer than the building itself, though it's difficult to tell with the snow and ice slicking it. The surface of the water is uncomfortably close, and I swear I can see things swimming just out of my view in the inky water.

   "One of three entrances... The second is more difficult to reach," the leading Delver says as we proceed down the pier. "The third is even more difficult as one must proceed by boat." I can't imagine going out on that sea, even if it's by boat.

   We soon reach the end of the pier, mere feet away from Idofront's exterior. I can reach out and touch the spinning structure if I want to, though I don't. The building spins much quicker than it seemed to from afar. Its exterior appears to be made of both stone and steel, the steel stretching out in plates and beams meant to support the original stone structure. A four-foot ledge juts out from the building, though it's lined with iron fencing. We wait until there's a gap in the fencing before we make the short leap onto the ledge, and we're swept away from the pier.

   Stepping onto the ledge is nothing but disorienting, and I can feel the slight momentum of the building as it rotates. I look away from the moving water and at my feet, swallowing back the creeping motion sickness. When the Delver starts walking again, I concentrate on the back of his heels, trying not to stumble as exhaustion has truly taken hold of me along with the pain. I'm about ready to collapse.

   My mind lags behind my actions a bit, and I almost bump into the Delver when he stops. I look up, seeing he's standing before an open doorway that leads to a staircase that heads down into dim darkness. I hesitate as he proceeds down it, but I muster up the willpower, and I follow him down with the others behind us. At the bottom of the stairs stands a thick metal door with a handle that needs to be turned to open it, reminding me of the doors to cargo holds on ships. The door swings inwards with a low creak, and we enter. The pressure in the hall seems to increase and tighten when the door closes behind us, and I can feel a definite increase in temperature.

   Entering Idofront feels like I'm stepping into another world. The same unison of stone and steel exists here, though there's more metal. Pipes of varying sizes crawl along the walls and ceiling, the hiss of steam and slight swirl of water flowing through them faintly echoes out. Caged light bulbs hang along the walls at twelve-foot intervals, dying the walls and floor brown with their yellow hue.

   "Damn, it reeks like wet metal in 'ere," Melva mutters, her voice echoing slightly. She's right, it does, and now I can't stop smelling it after she pointed it out.

   "The Sovereign of Dawn will be here shortly," the leading Delver says, looking back at us. Even now that we're inside, he nor any of his fellow Black Whistles remove their masks. I'm about to ask why this is the case when echoing footfalls sound from further down the hall.

   "'Shortly' is certainly an accurate word to describe my arrival, Kanja," a man speaks in a deep, rich voice. I recognize his accent in a second, and the speaker himself rounds a corner, coming into view with two more masked Delvers following him.

   He's a man of impressive stature, only a head or so shorter than Ozen, though his shoulders aren't as wide as mine. He too is dressed in all black but with a more formal flair. His knee-length coat seems tailor-made, gloves form-fitting and refined while a black silk cravat is tied around his neck. Resting atop it is a white whistle that resembles a pair of boney hands clasped together in prayer. As I look up at his mask-shrouded face, bearing a single purple line that vertically slices down its center, I know who this is despite never seeing him before.

   "I welcome you to Idofront, fellow Delvers. It's simply wonderful to meet quite unique conquerors of the deep such as yourselves." The man spreads his arms out wide, as if beckoning us into them. "I am known as Bondrewd the Novel, the Sovereign of Dawn."