It had taken the seven saints all their power to create the Gate. Later, her mother had opened it with only her bare hands.
And now, here was Eliana Ferracora, her hands damp with sweat and wrapped in gold chains.
Tell me again what it is, she said. The Deep.
The Prophet hesitated. I worry repetition will only add to your fear.
Please. Talking through this will settle me.
Very well. The Deep is, essentially, an abyss. A void between worlds, as Zahra told you, months ago. No sight or sound. No physicality. Nothing but raw, unfettered empirium. At least, for angels, this has been true. Occasionally one of them might sense a flash of color, a whisper of sound. Visions that pass as if mere thoughts before the empty blackness returns. But it seems your power allows you a different experience. For you, the Deep is a place of continuous, corporeal illusion.
It’s also full of countless enormous monsters, let’s not forget, Eliana said dryly.
The Prophet sent a flutter of amusement. Yes. The cruciata that have entered the Deep from their world—which the angels named Hosterah—can indeed survive there. They are strange, ancient beasts that even the angels do not entirely understand. But little else can survive the Deep. The angels could not and lost their bodies.
Eliana placed her palms in the dirt. The earth beneath her was a familiar anchor. Panic beat a fierce drum in her heart. Images of her body tearing itself to pieces flashed through her mind.
You won’t lose your body as the angels did, the Prophet reminded her, though their voice vibrated quietly with tension. They could not pass through the Deep unharmed, but it seems that you can. Your mother could have too, I think, if she’d had the chance to try.
As if that were a comfort. Eliana set her jaw, rolled her shoulders. I will see things I cannot trust, but I have to trust them.
I think you will see, as you did that first day, faint images of what I believe are worlds beyond our own, as if you are walking through memory. But I think it isn’t memory—it is happening now, or has happened, or will happen. Many worlds, all connected by the Deep, in which time has no meaning.
Eliana focused on her steady breathing. You think.
It is a theory, the Prophet admitted. Many scholars throughout history—both human and angel—have posited the very concept I describe. Think about it. You were able to stand in those hills, even though they were mere illusions, echoes through the Deep. So, whatever you see today, be it roads or mountains or forests, trust it. Use it. Believe the illusion. Let your power provide you with reality.
Or else fall into the endless abyss? Eliana asked wryly. Be consumed by the Deep?
I am confident you will manage to avoid that.
And Eliana felt that confidence, sent to her by the Prophet on a steady current.
She wished she shared the feeling.
Instead, a sick fear gnawed at her stomach. She could not shake from her mind the violet sky tinged gray with the shadows of beasts. Though she had survived her first journey to the Deep, there was no certainty she would survive the second. But if she waited any longer, she would be cowed by the sight of this thing she had made.
Eliana held her breath, let go of the tree roots, and stepped swiftly through the fissure, expecting the same vista of soft hills and empty fields to greet her.
Instead, she saw a city crowded with narrow black spires that stretched toward a dark sky scattered with stars.
She froze where she stood, in the middle of a broad thoroughfare choked with people—merchants carting their wares, jugglers tossing glowing orbs, children leading animals by knotted ropes. Some of the animals she recognized; others, fleshy and mottled, she did not. If she looked too directly at any one thing, it slipped from her gaze, turned gray and cloudy, then flew out of sight. There was a faintness to it all, a slight discoloration, as if she were looking not at something real but rather at the relics of a dream.
They don’t see me, she said, slowly making her way through the crowded street. Dark shapes quivered at the corners of her eyes, giving her the unsettling sense that something vast was closing in upon her. She learned quickly to keep her eyes focused straight ahead, or else the world would start spinning. She could not think about what truly surrounded her: nothingness, endless and