The laughter followed Rasna across the crack.
Her boot struck the other side and the ground immediately snapped shut behind her, stone grinding against stone until the opening disappeared completely. She turned, half expecting heat to still breathe through the soil, but there was nothing. No crack. No gate. No path back.
The Mocking Eye drifted somewhere inside the haze ahead. "Forward suits you better."
Rasna ignored him. The mist began to thin. At first she thought the dark shapes ahead were hills. Then one of them shifted against the pale sky, and Rasna realized there was no earth beneath it.
A piece of land floated ahead of her.
Not small. An entire stretch of cracked ground hung over darkness, separated from where she stood by several meters of empty air. Beyond it rested another fragment, then another, spreading through the haze like pieces of a world that had been broken apart and never properly put back together.
Rasna stepped toward the edge. There was no bottom. A staircase hung sideways in the distance, half of it disappearing into nothing. A stone wall stood alone without any building attached to it. Farther away, the remains of a wooden roof rested upside down against another platform, its beams pointing toward the sky. None of it belonged together.
The Mocking Eye appeared beside the isolated wall, too far away for Rasna to reach. "Still eager?"
Rasna's gaze stayed on the gap ahead. "You wanted me forward."
The Mocking Eye's smile widened. "So move."
Rasna looked for another route. There wasn't one.
A narrow strip of stone extended from her platform, broken in several places but reaching toward the next fragment. It looked barely wide enough for one foot.
Then she noticed the flowers. Tiny purple blooms grew from a crack near the beginning of the stone. Rasna crouched.
They were not Petunias. They were not anything she remembered seeing in Rassafans Garden. Their petals were narrow and almost translucent, bending beneath droplets of moisture despite the dry air around them.
She touched the soil beside them. Firm. The roots had dug deep into the crack. Rasna looked farther along the narrow bridge. Another cluster grew halfway across. Past them, near the broken end, several flowers had collapsed. Their stems were grey. Their petals curled tightly against the stone.
She stared at them for a moment. Living flowers. Dead flowers. Stable stone. Broken stone.
Rasna rose. Maybe coincidence. She stepped onto the bridge anyway. The first section held.
Her next step brought her beside the second cluster. The flowers trembled under the movement of her boots, but the stone beneath them remained solid.
She continued. Near the dead flowers, the bridge groaned. Rasna stopped immediately. A thin crack spread beneath her foot. Stone dropped away from the edge and vanished silently into the darkness below. Her breath caught. She stepped backward until the living flowers were beside her again. The cracking stopped. Rasna looked toward the Mocking Eye. He simply watched. Of course he did.
She crouched beside the flowers once more. In Rassafans Garden, flowers were never just decoration. Every flowerbed represented a person, blooming with their life and withering with their death. Names, memories, entire lives remained tied to what grew there.
And now, somehow, they were warning her.
Rasna moved along the stronger side of the bridge, keeping close to every patch that still carried color. It worked.
She reached the next fragment. Then another.
The farther she traveled, the stranger the ruins became. A doorway made from pale stone stood beside a section of black wooden flooring. A carved pillar rested upside down against something resembling part of a street. Pieces of stained glass glittered across grey dirt, though there was no window anywhere nearby.
Flowers grew between all of it. Different flowers. Some bright and unfamiliar. Some barely more than weeds. Others twisted into shapes Rasna had never seen before.
None grew in flowerbeds. They appeared wherever the fractured world allowed them to, pushing between stairs, walls and shattered stone as though life itself was trying to stitch the pieces together.
Rasna stopped beside a yellow bloom growing from an old brick. She didn't recognize the building. She didn't recognize the flower.
Whatever this place was, it had collected both from somewhere. Something moved below her. Rasna froze.
A scraping sound traveled beneath the platform. Slow. Heavy. She looked over the edge. Nothing but darkness. The sound stopped. Then the entire fragment jolted.
Rasna stumbled forward as stone split behind her. A section of the platform dropped away. She ran.
The ground shook beneath her boots, breaking apart in violent bursts. A black shape moved far below, enormous enough that she could only see pieces of it whenever it passed through the faint light.
Rasna reached the edge. Another platform waited several feet away. Between them, nothing. She looked down. Then at the flowers. A thick patch of white blooms covered the opposite ledge. Alive.
Rasna backed up two steps and ran. Her boots left the ground. For one terrible moment there was only darkness beneath her.
She hit the other side hard, shoulder striking stone, fingers digging into the white flowers as she pulled herself away from the edge. The platform behind her collapsed. Fragments disappeared into the dark. Whatever moved below followed them. Rasna stayed on the ground until the shaking stopped.
The Mocking Eye appeared above her. "You learn quickly."
Rasna pushed herself upright. "You could have warned me."
The Mocking Eye's eye narrowed with amusement. "The flowers did."
Rasna said nothing. That answer bothered her more than she wanted it to. She continued through the ruins.
This platform was larger than the others, carrying the remains of what might once have been a building. Three walls still stood, though none matched. One was pale and polished. Another was made from rough red stone. The third was dark wood covered in markings.
Rasna approached it. Names. Dozens of them. Some carefully carved. Others scratched so violently into the surface that pieces of wood had splintered away. Symbols filled the spaces between them. Numbers. Dates she did not understand. Short sentences written in languages she had never seen.
Someone had been here. Many someones. Rasna moved closer. Small objects had been pressed into cracks in the wall. Most were flowers. Dried petals. Broken stems. Entire blooms flattened against the wood. Some had lost every trace of color. Others remained faintly red, blue or yellow.
Rasna ran her fingers near them without touching. It reminded her of Rassafans Garden in the worst possible way. People leaving flowers behind. Except here, nobody had prepared beds for the dead. They had placed the flowers themselves. Markers. Proof. Maybe warnings.
A tiny bloom near the bottom caught her attention. Rasna crouched. It was simple. Five pale petals around a dark center. Nothing special. But she knew it. She had seen flowers like it pushing between the cracked stones of Rassafan more times than she could count. They survived where almost nothing else bothered trying.
Rasna touched one petal. Soft. It bent beneath her finger. Fresh. Her stomach tightened. Everything else on the wall had dried long ago. This one hadn't.
Rasna slowly looked over her shoulder. The Mocking Eye stood in the doorway. His expression had changed. Not much. But he wasn't laughing.
"Who put this here?" Rasna's voice sounded smaller than she wanted.
The Mocking Eye looked at the flower. Then back at her. "You are not the first person from Rassafan to lose their way."
Rasna stared at him. Before she could ask anything else, stone scraped somewhere beneath the building. The sound from before. Closer now. The floor trembled once. Rasna rose quickly. Another fresh petal lay several steps farther inside the ruined structure. Then another. A trail. Not old. Not withered. Fresh petals leading deeper into a place where nothing should have been growing at all.