Down was a word with a bottom to it for everyone except Mona.
They went into the seam in a line.
Selah and Maren still chained hand to hand because the second they let go the wall came down, so they walked sideways shaking and hating it.
Soren had a hand on the mole the whole way because Mona's map was the only map.
The thing in the dark didn't move when they came.
It sat in its rootless place under the yard the whole academy drilled on every morning, and it let them come down to it.
Then it stopped being patient.
The seam closed behind them with a sound like a jaw, and the floor Soren had been standing on a breath ago was gone.
What came up through it wasn't the entity.
It was a shape the entity had made out of itself to do its hands' work, a thing the size of three men with too many joints, and it came to Yara first.
"Grimm!" Soren said, and Yara was already gone, red eyes blinking out, the wolf landing where the woman had stood.
