chapter thirteen
482 Words
They descended beneath Willowmere just before dawn.
The passage was narrow.
The walls were covered with the same strange symbols from the puzzles.
The deeper they went, the colder it became.
Eventually, they reached a massive stone door.
At its center was the same empty space.
The boy looked at her.
“The missing piece.”
She stepped closer.
The mysterious object began glowing faintly.
She raised it.
Nothing happened.
She tried again.
Still nothing.
Then she remembered the first puzzle.
The animals.
The shapes.
The missing center.
She looked at the stone door.
“What if we're still thinking about this wrong?”
The boy frowned.
“How?”
She looked at the symbols surrounding the door.
“They don't represent objects.”
“What do they represent?”
“People.”
Meera's face changed.
She had understood.
The girl studied the puzzle carefully.
Each animal represented a person.
Each shape represented something about them.
And one space was empty.
She looked at the center.
Then at herself.
Her heart stopped.
The boy noticed.
“What?”
She whispered,
“The missing piece is a person.”
Meera said nothing.
The girl looked at her.
“It's me.”
The door suddenly shook.
A deep sound travelled through the stone.
The mysterious object slipped from her hand.
The ground beneath them trembled.
The boy grabbed her arm.
“Move!”
The door began opening.
Not outward.
Inward.
Beyond it was darkness.
Then the darkness moved.
A strange blue light appeared deep inside the doorway.
The girl couldn't breathe.
She had expected a room.
Instead, she saw another sky.
Another world.
A place filled with enormous floating structures and rivers of light.
The boy stared.
“What is that?”
Meera whispered,
“The realm.”
The girl stepped closer.
Then she heard something.
A voice.
Faint.
Almost impossible to hear.
But she knew it.
Her grandmother.
“Don't come looking for me.”
The girl froze.
“Grandma?”
The voice disappeared.
She stepped toward the portal.
The boy grabbed her hand.
“Wait.”
She looked at him.
For once, there was no joke on his face.
Only fear.
“You don't know what's on the other side.”
She looked at him.
“Neither do you.”
“No.”
He paused.
“But I know I don't want you going there alone.”
Something about those words stayed with her.
She looked away quickly.
For the first time, she realized that somewhere between the arguments, the secrets, and the impossible journey, she had begun to care about him.
Not because he was mysterious.
Not because he had saved her.
But because he was still standing beside her when he could have walked away.
She looked back at the portal.
Whatever was waiting inside had been waiting for her for years.
And now it knew she had finally arrived.
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