Emptiness crashed over the shop, cutting the world down to ragged breaths.

  The map before them dimmed. Where the Forest of Hope once rustled, now stretched a grey, lifeless film like sticky cobweb. Far off in the mist, the outlines of the Islands of Silence barely showed, ghosts drowned in thick amber. At the very centre gaped a fracture, spreading in coal-black cracks. The Dead Limit. The place where reality ceased to exist. Her place.

  The Keeper passed his palm through the air, tracing an incomprehensible sign. The landscape blurred, twisting into a funnel. The children drew breath at the same moment.

  Before them lay a valley flooded with even, sterile light. Rows of identical houses stretched to the horizon. Not one window broke the line. Everything submitted to a single order.

  The image drew closer, pulling out details. Veronica saw a girl. She had large, wide-open eyes that reflected nothing. She mechanically blew soap bubbles, but they did not burst. They froze in the air, turning into smooth coloured spheres.

  It reminded Veronica of her own dream, the one with the frighteningly perfect world.

  “The Village of Silver Bloods,” the Keeper said. “The last stronghold of what she calls ‘ideal order’. No one falls ill here, no one weeps, because tears are excess moisture.”

  Veronica stepped back involuntarily and pressed her back against Andrew’s shoulder. He stood gripping the edge of the table. In his jacket pocket something jolted, sending a short jolt down his legs. The figurines sensed the Abyss nearby.

  “Wait…” Veronica’s voice broke on an intake of breath. She swept her hand through the musty air of the shop. “All this… worlds, order, chaos… It’s somewhere far away! What do we have to do with it?!”

  The Keeper slowly turned toward her. Before her was no longer an old man’s face, but a bottomless void reaching to the depths where the echo of another ritual still trembled.

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  “You still hope this is not about you, even though your hand remembers the cold of the Spark.”

  He unrolled a darkened scroll on the table. On it emerged a circle: in the centre the outline of a Bird with spread wings, and around it seven figures like cages.

  “She could not destroy the Primordial Force,” the Keeper said in a low voice. “So she did what no one expected. She tore it apart.”

  The Keeper touched the symbols on the paper.

  “She divided the Essence into seven parts and sealed them in forms like the ones your companion hides in his pocket.”

  Andrew pulled out both figurines.

  “So… we carry prisons with us?” he asked, examining the birds.

  “You carry a chance,” the Keeper corrected. “The chains weaken when something appears that she fears more than anything. Unpredictability. You two are pure chaos for her sterile order. That is why the artefacts began to awaken in your hands.”

  Andrew clenched his fingers around the figurines.

  “But who is this She?” he breathed. “Who is capable of that?”

  The Keeper closed his eyes briefly, listening to ancient pain.

  “Moranda.”

  The figurines jerked and slid toward the edge of his palm, straining toward the map. Andrew caught them, not letting them escape.

  He looked at Veronica. Her eyes widened. She simply stood and waited.

  “And if… if we just leave?” the words slipped out before he realised he had spoken them.

  The Keeper was not surprised. There was no judgement in him, no pity, only the memory of thousands of such questions.

  “If leaving changed anything, I would open that door for you myself.”

  He pointed to the parchment. The landscape changed again.

  Their park appeared, the one where they had run through yellow leaves in autumn. Now the grass lay in a dead grey strip, unnaturally even. The swings stood frozen, ice holding the chains, and the trees stood as motionless blocks.

  “Changes have already begun,” the Keeper said calmly. “They will come here. First a shadow will fall on your town, then on your house. Darkness will devour the shadow, and then come for its owner.”

  Andrew pictured his parents’ faces frozen in even silence, like the girl with the bubbles. His knees trembled faintly. All that remained of the dream of heroic adventure was the heavy necessity of protecting what he loved.

  He turned to Veronica.

  “Ver…” He swallowed and spoke more firmly. “We can’t leave.”

  She looked at him, holding her breath. Her fingers found his palm and closed around it.

  “I know,” she breathed.

  Andrew stepped to the table and placed both figurines in the centre of the circle. A thin click cut the silence. The lines on the map flared and rose upward in a wave of light.

  At that same moment the Cameron manor, which had long pretended to be a home, shuddered from an underground jolt. The crystal chandelier chimed.