Albus shook his head. “I don’t know. When you got hurt, Petra snapped. The whole place went berserk. And then, when she conjured the portal, she sent some sort of… force rushing out over the whole countryside in every direction. We were just inside the fence, hunkered down and hiding. But everybody outside the graveyard, they just…vanished!”
“Puff of smoke,” Rose said, her voice small and terrified.
“It was a defensive thing,” James said, looking from face to face.
“She didn’t know what she was doing!”
Scorpius met James’ eyes, his face stolid. “I don’t think Morganstern did it at all,” he said with low emphasis. “And I don’t think it stopped when it vanished her attackers.”
James felt slowly chilled to the bone as the reality of Scorpius’ words settled into place.
“It wasn’t Petra’s power that caused it,” he whispered, turning back to the flashing, crackling lightning bolt. “It was… a sort of shockwave of finality. It started right here, the moment that she opened her portal. It was the last crashing footstep that brought the whole house of reality down.”
“But that means,” Rose said in a quavering voice, “the shockwave is still spreading, still swallowing up everything as it goes, extending over the whole earth!”
“Over the whole universe,” Zane exhaled bleakly, looking up at the falling dark.
The storm still boiled above, thickening and groaning with thunder. But everything else beyond the graveyard was descending slowly into black, slipping away like things behind a velvet veil.
“Petra’s plan didn’t work,” Rose slumped, horrorstruck.
“It was never meant to work,” Ralph countered, anger tightening his voice.
Albus shook his head. “But it had to!” he exclaimed, fear and frustration raising his voice. “She had all the elements! I didn’t think it would work without killing me or James, but his blood alone must have been enough!”
“What elements?” Scorpius asked, his eyes sharpening.
Rain began to fall all around, speckling the graves with fat, heavy drops. Wind scoured the weeds and grass, growing restless even as everything beyond the fence drifted into seamless dark. The lightning portal offered the only illumination, dimming by degrees with each passing second.
“The three sigils!” Albus cried over the growing wind, throwing up his hands. “Odin-Vann made Petra and I both memorize them so we wouldn’t forget! There was the token of generation, the key of an alternate world, and the blood of dearest love! We came here, dug up Petra’s grandmother’s grave and took a lock of her hair. That was the token of a previous generation. She had the brooch from Morgan’s original universe. That was the key from an alternate world. And then, well, she was supposed to kill me.”
Rose looked appalled. “You were willing to die for her portal!?”
Zane boggled. “You were her dearest love?”
Albus flopped helplessly to a seat on a broken gravestone. “James is the one she loves, although I never could imagine why. She couldn’t bring herself to kill him, though, so I volunteered. She asked me to help, after all. A few weeks ago, Odin-Vann told me what that might mean. I wouldn’t do it for him. But for Petra….”
“Odin-Vann knew it was his plan all along,” Zane nodded dourly. “Even before the Archive was destroyed and he told Petra about this one last option.”
“I was close enough to be the final of the three sigils,” Albus shrugged, “being of the same blood as James. So yeah, I was willing to die in this world, for Petra, but not in any forever sort of way. I’m no martyr. Petra said that if she did her part right, we would get a sort of alternate destiny instead of this one. None of this bad stuff would have happened. I’d be alive in that other destiny, and we’d probably never even remember this version of events.”
“So, when she got my blood on her hand,” James wondered aloud, “she knew that it might be enough to open the dimensional portal. After all, if she hadn’t healed me, I probably would be dead right now. She called the incantation, and it worked.”
Zane gave a low whistle. “A one-way ride to the other side…”
“But why did this part need to happen at all!?” Rose moaned, her eyes wide and her mouth turned down in misery. “Our parents! The whole world! All breaking away into nothing! Whatever portal Petra opened and went into, it sure didn’t change anything! Why even make her do it!”
“Everything Odin-Vann said was a lie!” James exclaimed, suddenly filled with a sort of bereft rage. “He just wanted her busy so he and Judith could work their plan behind her back! He probably forced her to conjure a portal into nothing just to end her!”
“No,” Ralph suddenly said, his voice low. His eyes bulged in thought, and he reached out in the lowering dark, groping, grabbing onto James’ arm. “No! He didn’t lie about everything! At least… not about one thing!”
“But…” James blinked, turning aside to his friend. “You said…nothing Odin-Vann said could be trusted. And you were right. He was a liar and a traitor from the start.”
Ralph was shaking his head in wonder, still staring at nothing, deep in thought. “There was one thing he didn’t lie about. Because he didn’t really mean to say it! He let it out without even thinking. And then, just as quickly, he covered it up. Don’t you remember?” His eyes finally focused and he turned to James.
Urgently, Albus demanded, “Out with it, Dolohov.”
“Rose,” Ralph said, turning aside to her. “Yesterday when we all met up on the Gertrude, you asked Odin-Vann where Petra could go to accomplish her task, where destiny was still intact and her choices would still matter. Do you remember what he said?”
Rose frowned at him in the dark, her eyes wide and stricken.
“The past,” James answered softly, realization dawning on him.
“I remember. He let it slip, and then glossed over it, saying that he meant some place that Petra had once been to, someplace important to her. But that was just a cover up. Because the past is where he and Judith planned to go all along…!”
Ralph nodded slowly, somberly. “He never intended for Petra to conjure a portal to Morgan’s dimension. He meant to use her to conjure a portal through time. As a sorceress, she’s the only one powerful enough to do it! Whatever he and Judith mean to do, whatever new destiny they intend to create, it has to be done back before destiny was shut down. When choices still mattered!”
“Before all of this happened,” Rose said faintly.
“We have to follow her!” James cried, rousing and stepping toward the lightning portal again, even as it thinned, still fading.
“We can’t!” Albus said, grabbing his brother’s shirtsleeve again.
“I already told you! Anyone who enters the portal without the three sigils is killed instantly! It’s dark magic! It requires payment!”
“Here you go,” Scorpius said, approaching and taking James’ hand, dropping something onto his open palm.