“Erro.”
The clock shivered on the ground.
And then it fell apart. Its wooden sides split open, and its face tipped forward, as if hinged, and out of the gaps spilled two lines of crisp white light. They burned, like fuses, spreading out to either side, and then up, tracing twin cracks through the air, until they were as tall as Calin, taller still, and then they turned again, and joined together overhead, carving the outline of the door.
The space within the doorway darkened, the wall behind the persalis blotted out, replaced by a curtain, a veil. But this time, she could see no place waiting beyond the curtain, no ghostly shimmer of another world. Only a solid, inky black.
“There,” gasped Tes. “You see? It works.”
Calin grunted, and dug a hand into his pocket, producing the antidote, the milky contents shining in the vial. But then his eyes cut to the corner, where he’d flung the cog, the cog that wasn’t a key, just a piece of metal.
“Does it?” he asked, right before he cast the antidote through the doorway.
A sob tore from Tes’s throat as the bottle disappeared into the dark. It didn’t reappear in the corner by the cog. It didn’t reappear at all. Because the door was not a door to any room, or any world. It was a door to nowhere.
And now, the antidote was gone. Her life, gone with it.
Calin rounded on her, his eyes flat with disappointment.
And in that instant, Tes did the only thing she could. She pushed him.
She was not strong enough, of course. The full force of her slamming into Calin was only enough to make him stumble half a step, more in surprise than pain. But in that half a step, his elbow met the blackened surface of the door, and the door did a strange thing. It grabbed hold of Calin.
And dragged him through.
It happened so fast. A moment’s struggle, boots sliding on wood, hands clawing for purchase, and then he was gone, voice swallowed up halfway through a shout, words cut off as cleanly as fingers beneath a sharpened knife.
Tes’s legs folded. She sank to her knees on the damp wood floor. She should have been devastated. Perhaps it was the poison’s work, but in that moment, she felt only grim resolve. She’d done the right thing.
“Ferro,” she said to the door.
Close.
But the door did not.
Tes stared at the veil of darkness inside the glowing frame. The line of light that traced its edges should have split. The veil should have fallen away as the spell retreated back into the clock.
“Ferro,” she said again, pushing the last of her strength into the word, making it solid, making it strong.
The door to nowhere stared defiantly back.
And then, she noticed the breeze.
There were no windows in this room, and yet, a gentle wind had started. It was not flowing out from the door. It was going toward it, dragging at the air, and the room, and everything in it. The scraps she’d tossed aside while she was working began to shudder and drift across the floor like leaves, vanishing into the open black mouth of the void.
Tes crawled forward to the open clock, wrapped her fingers against the front, careful not to let her hands touch the wall of black that had swallowed Calin as she tried to pry the shell away, to reach the threads inside. But as she did, the clock did a horrible thing. It broke. The frame crumbled, and was sucked into the darkness.
And still, the door didn’t close.
In fact, it opened further, splintered past the edges of the frame. As it did, it made a sound, like a hammer against stone.
BOOM.
Tes scrambled backward, tried to get to her feet, but her legs buckled, the last strength going out of her limbs.
BOOM came the sound again, rattling through her as the doorway cracked, and threw out jagged black lines into the air to every side.
Get up, she pleaded with her body. It didn’t listen. Get up, she tried to say aloud, but her lungs were out of air. Her heart skipped a beat, and then the world flickered, and she was on the floor, her cheek resting against the wood. She didn’t feel scared.
The boom came again, but it sounded far away, or maybe she was.
Tes reached her hands into her coat, and folded her fingers over the little bone owl, felt him nestle against her palm.
She closed her eyes, and told herself the sound was the waves, crashing against the rocks back in Hanas. Told herself it was the sound of home as she drifted off to sleep.
IX
Alucard’s ears were ringing as he got to his hands and knees, brick debris curling around his shoulders. The room was dark, but he knew, even by the contours, where he was.
His father’s study.
Growing up, he was never allowed in here. Berras either. They only ever went as far as the doorway, and then, only when their father summoned them. But from that doorway, Alucard had learned every detail of the chamber. His father’s dark wood desk. The glass windows that rose behind it, their panes stained midnight blue and traced with silver.