Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“I thought Malore was the main danger,” Elira went on.
“The hunger path, the curse, all of that. But your other grandmother…” Her expression darkened.
“Her ambition makes his look like a child stealing candy. She’s been trying to push through any crack she can find.
Being on the other side, told me just how much she has invested in…
destroying the good. I saw things I still don’t understand.
She’s trying to infiltrate the Wards, the Hollows, the mirrors. Here.”
“Here,” I repeated, throat dry.
“She couldn’t reach this anchor directly,” Elira said. “The Ward refused her. But she could silence anyone who knew too much.” Her eyes flicked to Miora.
Miora grimaced. “Old oath,” she said hoarsely. “I agreed to keep this place secret as long as Elira lived. I didn’t realize the magic had… an adjusted definition of the word.”
“Elira dies,” Dad said slowly, “the oath assumes the secret dies with her but because she anchored herself here, it still counted.”
“Exactly,” Elira said. “When the pedestal woke, the old oath clamped down harder. Miora couldn’t speak of it. And I couldn’t get enough of myself together to walk in your dreams and tell you to check under your cottage.”
“That would’ve been helpful,” I muttered.
“Yes, well,” she said. “I was busy not ceasing to exist, but once I got erased at the Academy in the mirrors, I knew I better figure out a way to make contact.”
Karvey cleared his throat again.
“What woke it fully?” he asked. “This anchor has been… murmur-level for decades. Tonight it sang.”
Elira’s gaze went to me.
“You did,” she said softly. “You, the mirror, and your grandmother in Shadowick. She tried to brute-force a connection through the mirrors. The Hollows and the Wards pushed back. The backlash traveled along your mark, into every thread you touch. It hit this anchor like lightning. And your mom’s powers seemed to be the last bit of energy I needed. ”
“And you,” I said, “rode the current in.”
She inclined her head. “More or less. Very uncomfortable. Would not recommend as a mode of travel.”
I exhaled shakily. “So now you’re here. As in… here-here? You’re not going to flicker away in five minutes?”
“Time is still… odd,” she admitted. “I’m not fully independent of the under realm. If the Academy falls, I go with it. If the Wards crack completely, this anchor might fail. For now, I have… let’s say more presence than I did in the mirrors. Enough to meddle directly.”
Twobble’s voice floated faintly from above again.
“Can we come down now? Or do we need an invitation engraved in ghost ink?”
Elira laughed.
“Send the goblins,” she called. “Someone needs to celebrate properly.”
That broke whatever careful stillness remained.
Within a minute, Twobble and Skonk had clattered down the stairs with all the subtlety of a marching band. Twobble took one look at Elira, let out a strangled yelp, and then bowed so low his forehead nearly hit the pedestal.
“Great and ghostly Grandma Elira,” he intoned. “We are honored by your—”
“Get up,” she said, amused. “You’ll break your nose.”
He popped up, eyes shining. “You’re real. And glowy. And not trying to curse us. This is the best day of my life.”
Skonk was already taking notes, muttering about “post-mortem partial anchor states” and “Hollows-adjacent consciousness.”
The space filled with overlapping voices of questions, half answers, half laughs, the kind of chaotic joy that happens when relief crashes into wonder.
For a few precious minutes, the looming circle, the priestess, Gideon, all of it shrank. It was just us. Our ridiculous, magical, messy little family reunited with one of its lost pieces.
Grandma Elira stood in the middle of it, letting herself be fussed over and scolded and admired in turn. She ruffled Twobble’s hair until he squeaked, flicked a speck of dust off Karvey’s shoulder, pinched my father’s cheek, hugged my mother again, rested her forehead briefly against Miora’s.
Then her eyes drifted to me, and something in her expression shifted.
The hum of the pedestal changed too. Lower. Sharper.
I felt it at the same time she did: a ripple through the Stone Ward, not from below this time, but from outside. From the edges of Stonewick.
Like a hand pressing flat against the town’s skin.
Elira’s smile faded.
All the chatter died, one thread at a time, as if someone were turning down the volume on us and up on the rest of the world.
Karvey’s head snapped up, stone eyes unfocusing as he listened outward. His shoulders went rigid.
“The ridge,” he said. “Something just touched the outer line.”
Mom’s fingers twitched, magic rising instinctively to her hands. Dad’s nostrils flared, wolf-scenting an enemy he couldn’t see yet. Keegan moved closer to me without seeming to, body angling between me and the stairs.
My butterfly mark burned ice-cold.
The anchor stone under the pedestal pulsed once, hard, light flaring, then steadied. Elira’s form flickered around the edges, as if a wind we couldn’t feel was trying to rip her away.
She grimaced, steadying herself with both hands on the pedestal.
“There,” she said through her teeth. “She’s noticed.”
“The priestess?” I whispered, even though I already knew. The temperature in the room dropped a degree, my breath puffing faintly in the air.
Elira nodded, eyes dark. “Power always sniffs out where it’s not welcome. She’s testing the Stone Ward. Again.”
“Can she get through?” Keegan asked.
“Not easily,” Elira said. “She can’t enter this anchor. The Hollows still won’t let her. But she can batter at the edges. Distract. Frighten. Look for weaknesses.”
Outside, faint even through the thick earth and stone, came a sound like distant, grinding thunder.
Or maybe it was just the blood rushing in my ears.
The earlier warmth in my chest turned to ice. My earlier, foolish wish, to just make it to the circle, to hug my daughter, to deal with the priestess later, felt like something from another lifetime.
I met Elira’s gaze.
“She knows I found you,” I said.
“She knows you woke another power,” Elira replied quietly. “And she will not like sharing.”
A long, cold shiver went through the house. Through all of us.
For the first time since I’d stepped into the cellar, my joy and relief had to make room for something else:
The clear, sharp knowledge that whatever was coming…
had just taken a step closer.