Cold swept through the hall in an invisible wave. The world narrowed to the circle where the two of them stood.

  “Did you hear that?” Andrew breathed.

  The rustling thickened, gaining voice.

  “They’re here…”

  “They’ve awakened…”

  “The Spark has touched them…”

  Veronica clutched his sleeve.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too,” Andrew said. “But if we back into a corner, they’ll crush us.”

  He stepped forward, testing whether his own resolve would hold under his feet.

  The grey barrier in front of them wavered. A beam cut through the depths.

  The figures dissolved, vanishing in sharp light. Ahead appeared a silhouette. The light did not come from lamps. It came from within his clothes, caught in embroidered patterns like golden crumbs.

  “They will not go further,” the voice said. “It is not permitted.”

  Veronica and Andrew recognised the tone at once. The shopkeeper stood before them.

  “We… got lost,” Veronica managed first. “We need to get out.”

  The old man smiled faintly.

  “You have already left, but not where you are used to.”

  Andrew scratched the back of his head.

  “Is this… still the shop?” he asked, bewildered.

  Instead of answering, the shopkeeper raised his palm and slowly passed it through the air. The room changed.

  Shadows flowed along the walls, spreading into new shapes. The floor beneath their feet cracked and folded into a mosaic pattern. Shelves blurred for a moment, then gathered again, but in a different order.

  The shopkeeper lowered his hand.

  “The shop is only a shell,” he said, looking at the children. “You stand on the Threshold, the place where one world ends and another begins.”

  He turned his gaze to the map. Silver lines on the parchment stretched, shifting their positions.

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  Veronica felt a cold drop slide down her neck.

  “What Threshold?” she asked.

  The guardian straightened.

  “Where you are used to seeing walls, nothing holds anymore. The Threshold is the fracture between worlds, and you crossed it before you understood.”

  The words rang too clearly in this unsteady space.

  Andrew wanted to object, but realised it was pointless. Everything happening needed no explanation. It simply was.

  “And you… are probably the guardian?” he asked.

  The old man tilted his head slightly, acknowledging not the question, but the understanding itself.

  “In your world they call me the Keeper. Here I am only the one who holds the Threshold so it does not collapse.”

  Andrew swallowed. Everything around pushed them toward an edge they did not yet know how to name.

  Veronica watched every movement of the old man intently, trying to catch the hidden meaning.

  The Keeper extended his palm toward the map. The drawing on the parchment flared from within. From chaotic strokes the outline of a world slowly emerged: crystalline mountains, valleys, forests. In the very centre a black spot stirred, pulsing with its own darkness.

  “What is that?” Veronica asked cautiously.

  “It is her wound,” he said. “Now look at what was before the knife.”

  Light thickened above one section. Lines gathered into a circle, and on its place a clearing gradually appeared. The air above the table grew dense, breathing harder.

  Veronica felt pulled forward. The world on the map opened, drawing her inside. Grass touched her feet. A force raged in her chest that ordinary breath and thoughts could not contain.

  Before her appeared a circle of symbols burned into the earth. Inside it stood two girls. The older one held the centre of the ritual. Light under her skin tore outward, refusing to obey. And the younger…

  Veronica froze.

  She had seen that face before. On the old photograph they found in the attic chest. The same cheekbones. The same sharp turn of the chin. But now she was here.

  Somewhere nearby stood a mother with hands clenched tight. A father held a staff, not allowing the power to tear the circle.

  And only at the edge of the clearing someone hid in the shadow of roots. A beast with yellow eyes trembled, reacting keenly to how the world around stretched to the point of cracking.

  Veronica tried to breathe. Heat ran through her veins, burning from inside. She knew: one more word or gesture and everything would change, but this knowledge did not belong to her. The foreign body noticed her and pushed her out.

  The impact threw Veronica back. The world returned with a jerk, too sharp to accept at once.

  Before her lay the parchment again, though the scene on it still distorted for a moment: two girls in the circle, tense adults, the beast at the roots.

  “She tried to hold the sea,” the Keeper said slowly. “But the sea holds only itself.”

  Veronica stayed silent. The echo of another’s breath still lived in her lungs.

  The light on the clearing broke. Energy held by the symbols went wild. Wind tore the cloak from the mother’s shoulders. The younger girl’s hair rose. The father raised the staff, closing the circle, but it was too late.

  Magic snapped. The beast at the roots stretched and vanished in torn light, without time to whimper. The outlines of people blurred. Only one figure remained, the one in the circle. In her palm the stone of the amulet bloomed. The spark in the girl’s eyes went out, leaving ringing emptiness.

  The picture faded and dissolved.

  Andrew found his voice with difficulty.

  “She… went mad?”

  “Worse. She became perfectly logical. Chaos killed her family. She decided to kill Chaos.”

  The room fell quiet.

  Andrew’s throat tightened. Here it was. Adventure. Only it smelled not of glory, but of ash.

  He looked at the blackening patches on the map. Those places with mountains and valleys that had always drawn him to draw them were dying before his eyes. His dream of “another world” collapsed.