I looked around the ground. I didn't see any fresh footprints, though there were old prints frozen in the mud. I looked back to Ahmed, he was bundled up in his dark robes, with the turban wrapped around his face. I nodded to him and began walked through the cemetery, trying to feel for the right door. My intuition had been right on throughout all the worlds, and I knew it wouldn't fail me now.

I saw a crypt up ahead and looked carefully at it. There was an angel carved from marble standing on top of it, and the doors had large iron rings on them. There was a keyhole in one of the doors, it looked like it fit an old fashioned skeleton key. I took out the ring of keys I had found and there was a long iron skeleton key on it.

I put the key into the hole and turned it. It seemed to be stuck at first, and then with enough force, it finally turned in the lock. I took the key out and grasped one of the iron rings and pulled the door open.

I couldn't really smell anything, my nose was just about frozen from the cold, but the air from the crypt seemed to be warmer. I turned back to make sure Ahmed was right behind me and we went inside.

It was dark, so I pulled out a couple candles from the satchel and used a match to light them. I handed one to Ahmed and held the other one up so I could see around inside the tomb. There was a coffin on a raised platform. I carefully scanned the floor, walking slowly around the coffin. I knelt down and saw scrape marks on the floor. The knowledge popped into my mind like a kernel of popcorn exploding.

I stood up quickly and went around to the other side of the platform. I leaned my weight against it and gave it a shove. It moved about an inch. Ahmed came up next to me and put his weight into it as well and that helped. Together we managed to push the entire platform over to the side, and I looked down beneath where it had stood.

There was a staircase leading down into darkness. I held my candle up as I began my descent. The steps went down, and down, and down. It was more than a couple stories before the stairs finally ended. The walls were covered in ice down here, and it was as cold outside. I looked up above my head at the wall, there was a torch in a holder about a foot over my head. Ahmed reached up and took it down and I lit it with my candle. The torch flared to life and the room lit up. The ceiling was so high up, that I couldn't see it, there was still just darkness above. I looked at the place where we were standing. It was a half circle stone floor with a low stone wall around it about three feet high. The center part of the circle led to a bridge. I walked over the wall and looked down.

A deep chasm that led down into darkness was below us. I felt Ahmed's arm wrap around my waist, holding me back so I wouldn't fall.

"This way," I said and started across the bridge. We began walking across when I heard the first stone drop, clattering down into the chasm. There was a low rumbling sound and my heart about stopped. I reached back and grabbed his hand, as I broke into a run to get across in time. The noise got louder as the end of the bridge began collapsing. I stopped when we were finally to the other side and looked back. It seemed to go in slow motion as the whole viaduct fell.

I looked at our current options. There were four tunnels to choose from. I took the amulet out from under my shirt and held it up. It swung in a circle for a moment then began going back and forth, directing us toward the second passage. I looked back up at Ahmed and he nodded.

He went first, holding the torch up to light the way. The path was on a slight incline, and then got steeper as we went farther along. It leveled out and finally opened up into a room. My candle had gone out from when we ran across the bridge, and I relit it from the torch. This was the right place. I held up the candle to search the room. On the wall was the symbol, I moved across to it, but I didn't see any sparkling gemstone. I looked up to the top space on the left side, where the stone should be. I looked into the other spaces and it looked as if someone had stuck plain stones in each space.

I wasn't quite sure what I should do. So I reached up and pulled the stone out from the space that I needed and took it down. Suddenly something sprayed out of the hole and I threw my arm up to shield my face. I started to feel dizzy and Ahmed came up behind me and grabbed me as I wavered. I felt lopsided, like one side of my body was heavier than the other. We both fell to the floor, I was between his legs and his back slid down the wall.

I wasn't sure how long I had been out, but I still had the stone in my hand. I felt him stir behind me and I crawled across to where my things had fallen to the floor.

I unlatched the satchel and slid the box out and tried the stone there. There was no smoke, nothing happened. I shook my head as I pulled it back out. I searched the rest of the room, almost becoming frantic. It had to be here.

Ahmed bent down and brushed the dust away from the corner of the walls near the symbol. There were several stones there on the ground, he picked them up and looked through them. He held one of the up and caught a faint glimmer.

"Here," he said to me, "Try this one." I took it from him, and placed it in the hole. The smoke rose up, smelling like spices. I threw my arms up around his neck and hugged him hard. I let go and packed the box back into the satchel, latching it securely.

Now the hard part was going to be finding a way out of here. Although, when I thought about it, I didn't know why I couldn't just use the stone to move on from here. I pulled the stone disc back out and looked at it. None of the stones were glowing, so I slid it back inside and tried to figure out what we were going to do now.

We followed the passage back to the place where the bridge had fallen. There were three other passages to try, so I concentrated on being outside and above ground and held up the amulet once more.

It swung toward the last passage. We started into the channel with Ahmed ahead of me with the torch. It curved around so many times I was all turned around. All I could tell was that we were heading upwards, which I took as a good sign. Then I saw light up ahead. There were a couple bushes at the end of the tunnel, and I saw a light gray sky. We pushed our way out and found ourselves on an open plain. The cemetery was out in the distance, and the snow had begun to fall again heavier than when we started. Ahmed took his pack off and pulled out a rolled up tent. I realized he was right, I definitely needed sleep, and I was sure he'd be able to keep me warm.

We curled up inside after he had gotten the tent set up and I felt safe and secure all wrapped up in his arms. I slept really well all through the night. I was surprised at how warm I stayed, but with the nice hot body next to me I had no problems sleeping.

In the morning, I pulled out the notebook to read some more. There were a couple strange notations that confused me. I read more about the tearing of the worlds, and about a prophecy about a stone called the Gunungapi that would bring order back to the worlds and heal the rifts.

I pulled the satchel over to me and pulled out everything that was in there. I set the box, the book and the crystal disc aside. I found the coins, and the matches and the flashlight. I stuck my hand in and felt around. I held it upside down and shook it. The stone was missing.

I moved my clothes out of the way, and looked in the silk bag as well. It was not here. Crap. It must have fallen out when we were under the cemetery. Then I realized that I hadn't really looked through everything since I had been up in the tower held prisoner in the castle above the caverns. That meant it could be anywhere in the last couple worlds. My shoulders slumped as I realized what that meant. After trying to go back to a previous world before, we had gone to the desert world and it had been almost ten years later and many things were out of place. I was still not even sure that it was the same world. I know Ahmed didn't think it was, there was just too much different.