I woke up lying on my back, a cold, hard surface under me and silver mist floating lazily above me. My mind cleared surprisingly quickly, and the memories of what had just happened flooded back: the antlered wolf, the attacker, the voice beckoning and carrying me into the mist.

How long had it been? I had no idea. The fog made it impossible to tell what time of day it was.

I slowly sat up, instinctively wincing at the pain I expected to feel—but to my surprise, there wasn’t any. I looked down at my shoulder, only to find that it was fine. No blood. The hole in my sleeve where the wolf’s fangs had pierced through was still there, but all it revealed was my pale, unbroken skin.

I tried to move my arm. No pain. Like it had never been dislocated at all.

Curious, I reached up to my neck and felt the skin of my throat, where the ashen handprints had been aching since Orion’s first attempt to strangle me. The lingering soreness was gone. I didn’t have a mirror to look, but I suspected the handprints had also vanished.

All in all, I felt better than I had in days. For a second, panic flared in my chest as the thought crossed my mind that maybe that meant I’d been unconscious for a long, long time—long enough to heal all my injuries.

But then I remembered that, you know, even time won’t un-dislocate a shoulder. Duh, Ian. Which meant that someone or something had healed me.

So where were they?

I slowly got to my feet, turning around in a circle. While I was still surrounded by the endless fog, it felt different. Like it wasn’t endless, but rather contained in a finite space. Even though I couldn’t see a ceiling or walls, I could sense them somehow; they were there, just hidden by the swirling silver mist. As if I was in a large cavern.

There was something else, too. Whispers in the shimmering light, and as I watched, a shape flickered into existence near my feet: a marble headstone. Confused, I crouched down to read it.

I didn’t recognize the name, though it was clearly the name of a dragon (trust me, they have very distinctive names). My heart immediately seized. Dragons don’t die often; if this was a real headstone—and to be fair, I had no idea if it was—then it must be indicative of another murder.

I reached out to touch it, to see if it was corporal, but before I could, the headstone shimmered and faded away, and something bright and silver, hot and flickering like a flame, rushed past me. I twisted to watch as the fragment of vivid, burning silver, much brighter than the surrounding fog, flew upwards and disappeared.

Then I realized that it wasn’t the only one. Overhead, there were flashes of silver, varying in shades from nearly white to almost charcoal, some dull like iron, some shimmering like diamonds, and each rushed by before fading into the mist above.

Were they…souls? Where the hell was I?

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It reverberated around the cavern-like space, but also felt like it echoed within my chest. It was the same voice as had called to me earlier: old, powerful, magical. It held all the possible qualities at once somehow—deep but high, quiet but booming, fragile but rich.

And then something shifted in the mists ahead of me, something far above my head, and the fog seemed to part like it had been cut by a knife as a massive figure emerged.

I can’t really do it justice in describing it to you. I don’t think anyone could. But I’ll do my best.

It had four faces, arranged in a kind of diamond configuration, their edges blending together around the curves of its head. One looked relatively human, though its features seemed to shift every time my eyes moved; one was certainly inhuman, though it too seemed to change between races each second—first I thought it was a dragon, then a fairy, then an elf, and my brain couldn’t even register each species fast enough before its features shifted again; one was utterly discernable, because it seemed to be simply light in the rough formation of a face; and the last was simply a skull, plain bone with its skin stripped off and darkness swirling within its eyesockets like a living essence.

And that was only the faces. The top of its convoluted head seemed to brush the just-barely-visible rocky ceiling of the cavern; its body was proportionally enormous, similarly composed of an incomprehensible array of elements that changed constantly. I saw skeletal arms, stark white; human hands with weathered skin; talons thicker than my legs; the decaying, rotting skin of a corpse; feathered wings stretching grander than its arm span; a shimmering green mermaid tail in place of legs; and everything in between. Each moment, each blink, the features and formation of the creature before me changed, seemingly making a new mix of human and inhuman, alive and dead, every single second.

After a few seconds, I had to close my eyes. My brain couldn’t take it; trying to comprehend the shifting forms was impossible. It was physically hurting—my head felt like it might explode.

As soon as my eyes closed, the pain vanished. It was like ancient stories of angels, then: its true form incomprehensible. I realized something else once I could focus, though. I realized that it felt…familiar. Even the few seconds I’d glimpsed had brought a sense of peace, of connection that I’d never experienced before, despite the utter chaos of its structure.

“My apologies,” said the Ancient One. “I do not get a lot of visitors.”

There was an awful sound of bones snapping, of flesh squelching, and a moment later I felt a hand on my shoulder. “You can open your eyes.”

I did. The Ancient One—I knew it had to be the same being, because I felt the same connection to it as before—had taken a more humanoid form, though it wasn’t quite human; something felt off. I think it was its aura; I could still sense the immense power at its core, so strong that the air around it seemed to quiver, making the edges of its humanoid figure almost blurry. Its form was about my height, a middle-aged man who looked…kind of like an older me, actually. It was smiling. And I sucked in my breath at its eyes: silver eyes, as shimmering and mysterious as the fog around us.

Silver eyes, just like I’d seen in my unconscious dream. The same one where the attacker had appeared. What did it mean that I’d dreamed of them both before meeting? What did it mean that its human form resembled an older version of me?

And how did I even get answers here? There was so much to ask.

Well, I had to begin somewhere, and I figured it was best to start with the obvious. “You’re the Ancient One,” I finally said.

“Yes,” it agreed good-naturedly.

“Where are we?”

It looked around the cavern slowly, at the appearing and quickly-vanishing headstones, at the flashes of silver flying overhead. “On the edge,” it said.

“The center of the planes,” I said, as everything I’d seen so far clicked into place in my brain. “Where they all meet. Human and inhuman, alive and dead. The edge of reality. This is it.”

“Yes,” it said. “The only place I can exist. I am bound here. To watch, but never leave.” Its silver eyes seemed sad.

“Why?” I asked.

“I always have been,” said the Ancient One. “I bring balance to the universe. But such balance does not come without a price.”

There was a long pause. I didn’t really know what to say next. I had countless questions, piled in my head like snowdrifts. But how did I possibly sort through them quickly enough to know which ones to ask? What if the Ancient One was only willing to answer a few of them? Did I have a time limit for my presence here? I could barely even think through the madness of curiosities pressing against my brain, let alone process them enough to vocalize them.

Apparently, my crisis was more obvious than I’d thought, because the Ancient One said, “You must have many questions. I know you have been trying to find me. Sit, and let me tell me what you need to know.”

I stared at it. “Just like that? No, I don’t know, trials or something?”

It chuckled. “Of course not. I would not have brought you here if I did not want to talk.” It gestured for me to sit.

Well, I supposed that was true. The Ancient One had carried me to its doorstep. I lowered myself to the ground, only to find that it was no longer the cold, hard surface that I’d woken on. Instead, it was soft and comfortable, as if I was sitting on invisible pillows. The Ancient One sat beside me, legs crisscrossed like the two of us were about to participate in an elementary school story time.

I guess it was kind of like that. For me, at least. Bring on the stories.

The Ancient One sighed, a deeper sigh than I’d ever heard in my life, even deeper than Henri’s Ian, shut up sighs. It felt like that sigh carried the weight of the world. Maybe it did.

“Only two other beings have ever visited me,” began the Ancient One. “One was very recently, and you have already met her. The other was a long, long time ago, and it is the reason you are here now.”

I was burning up with questions and remarks already; I literally bit my tongue to keep from letting any of them spill out. Interrupting might only annoy it, and I didn’t want to ruin my chances of hearing its stories.

“I suppose I should start from the beginning,” it said with another deep sigh. “Forgive me. As I said, I do not get a lot of practice in storytelling. Listening and watching to others is not the same as doing it myself. So perhaps I should show you instead.”

I looked at it with wide eyes. “What?”

It chuckled. “Trust me, you will be safe.” And before I could object, it reached forward and touched a finger to my forehead.

Immediately the Ancient One and its cavern dissolved around me, giving way to infinite darkness. It wasn’t like passing out, though; I was still fully conscious. I think I was just seeing what the Ancient One wanted to show me.

I heard its voice echo around me in the darkness. I have existed as long as the world has, it said. I have always been. I was not born. I simply came into being when the worlds formed. The darkness around me exploded with light, and I sat mystified as I watched, well, the building of everything I’ve ever known. I can’t really describe it other than to say it was a blur of colors and shapes, sped up so I could watch hundreds of years in seconds, nothingness yielding to grass and mountains and oceans. I saw the development of Neverland and the human dimensions side by side, and I sensed the Ancient One’s presence there in the background, as it watched it all.

I am not a god, whispered the Ancient One. I did not build it. I merely watched, as I always do. I can watch, but not influence. A timeless curse. I swear I heard it sigh again, from far away and somehow also right by my ear. I was thrilled when beings developed. Beings I could observe, guide, and protect—if only from a distance. Humans and inhumans alike. The side-by-side views of the dimension zoomed in so that I only saw Neverland. Allow me to focus on the inhumans, for it is from them that my first visitor came.

I couldn’t believe it; the scenes around me had evolved into displays of what must be early towns and villages of Neverland. They played like videos, showing a quaint fairy town full of flittering pixies; an underground community of dwarves, built in tunnels and caverns; and then—and then!—a village I’d heard of since I was a kid, but never seen. A village in a valley, small but beautiful, inhabited solely by griffins.

I saw griffins of all ages, walking the streets and having conversations. It made my heart ache, and only after a moment did I realize that the scene was narrowing still further, focusing on a blond teenager, who sat in an upstairs window of his house, writing in a journal. And as he glanced up to look outside, I couldn’t help but gasp. I’d know those lilac eyes anywhere, even if the years had caused crinkles at their edges. This was Henri, before he’d ever left home.

You know this part, whispered the Ancient One, and the images before me sped up again, showing my uncle’s love story in fast forward: I watched him leave his village, pausing at the top of the hill to look back; I watched him meet Lucille, saw his joyful face as he fell in love at first sight; I watched the first city blossom in seconds, its vivid colors blinding against the stark landscape. I watched Henri and Lucille move there, watched Henri work his way up through the government. I dreaded what was coming.

But the movie never got there; it paused when Henri was promoted to a position on the city council. A few weeks, I knew, before Lucille died.

His isn’t the only story that imploded that day, said the Ancient One. Surely you’ve wondered about the harbinger.

And the scene dissolved, immediately reforming into a dark town on a clifftop. Pale beings with dark eyes wandered its streets, and my field of view narrowed in once again until I was seeing one harbinger in particular, a tall, young man with glossy black hair. They prayed to me then, said the Ancient One. They always knew of me more than most, since they walked the line between the living and the dead. They worshipped me, and I spoke to them in return. I tried to guide them, to help them help others. After all, the path their kind walks is not an easy one.

I thought of Asher and Acacia, of what Henri and Asher had told me about the ostracization they’d dealt with since the beginnings of Neverland, of Sky nearly killing Asher just because he’d dared to exist, of their fear not of the monsters in the dark forests, but of leaving its borders. The Ancient One was right; the harbingers had never had an easy path.

One in particular grew to worship me perhaps too much, it said. The scene sped up again: I saw the glossy-haired harbinger praying at an altar, over and over again, multiple times a day; saw him spending hours buried in books, looking frustrated. He sought to find me, to talk to me face-to-face. Another sigh from the Ancient One that echoed through the visions around me. And I, desperate for his attention, for someone to talk to, led him to me.

The video showed the glossy-haired harbinger trekking through the silver fog, and then he was in this very cavern, talking inaudibly with the Ancient One in its silver-eyed humanoid form. I could make out only the faint echoes of their words, but the emotions were clear: at first reverent, then angry. The harbinger clearly wasn’t happy with the Ancient One’s words, and he began to yell, shouting and pointing fingers furiously. I gasped as he pulled a glinting sword from his belt and sliced at the Ancient One.

I felt the Ancient One’s pain more than I saw it; the pain seemed to echo through the air, even its memory heavy enough to weigh on my soul. The harbinger slashed at the Ancient One’s hands, getting in several hits before the Ancient One’s eyes flashed silver, and it swept him away with a gust of mist-filled wind. The harbinger faded into the fog, and only once he was gone did the Ancient One sink to the ground, clutching its hands to its chest—where one finger on each hand was missing, dripping silver blood.

The image paused there. He wanted to work with me, to be a prophet of sorts, said the Ancient One, its voice twisted in pain and regret. But he wanted power in return. Some of my power. And I couldn’t give it to him, even if I wanted to. It does not work like that. This time, its sigh was sorrowful. He did not believe me. He vowed that he did not need me to keep the balance, that he could do it himself, and that he would decide who died when. He wanted to make the rules. And I believe you already know how that turned out.

The scene began to play again, in fast-forward. And thank God for that, because it showed the part I’d known was coming: the harbinger murdering inhumans—some randomly, then ending up in the griffins’ village, because it happened to be closest to where he’d emerged from the fog. No other reason. Pure chance. Somehow that made it even worse.

In rapid speed, I saw him kill more and more of Henri’s village, saw Henri show up, saw the confrontation…saw him kill Lucille. And then saw Henri kill him.

I didn’t know if the scenes were going to pause after that or not, but it didn’t matter. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to slow the silent tears streaming down my cheeks. Deep breaths. I knew this already.

But it was still so much worse to see it firsthand.

No one came to see me again for hundreds of years, said the Ancient One quietly. No one knew he had met me, and it was best that way. Once the harbingers were exiled, many of them lost faith in me. My existence was doubted, though I could not have stopped the exile. I have always watched over them, however.

When I opened my eyes, the movie-like scenes had disappeared, and I found myself sitting in the cavern again, face-to-face with the Ancient One’s sad silver eyes. It held out its hands, and my heart seized when I saw the missing fingers. It had no ring finger on its left hand and no pinky on its right.

My throat felt very, very dry. I swallowed hard before trying to talk, but even then, my own voice came out cracked. “So why now? Why the visitors?”

The Ancient One sighed yet again. “As I said, the first was the reason for the others. You see, cutting off a piece of me is not so simple as a physical wound. It also separates a piece of my essence. Such a piece cannot be reattached—but it cannot die either. No. It can, over many years in the fog, exposed to the energy of souls, absorb enough to become a new being of its own.”

A slow, creeping suspicion was beginning to emerge in the back of my brain, but I was almost scared to say it out loud. “Two pieces of your essence were lost.”

“Yes,” agreed the Ancient One. It said nothing else, just watched me with intent eyes. I got the feeling it was waiting for me to continue.

Okay. Deep breaths. “And now there are two beings who can exist in both dimensions. That’s not a coincidence, is it?” I was holding my breath. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, about to leap off, never able to go back. The answer didn’t change who I was. It shouldn’t.

So then why did I feel like my entire identity rested in the balance of its reply?

The Ancient One’s face broke into a small smile. “It is not a coincidence,” it confirmed. “After hundreds of years, those two fragments became souls of their own, and found their way to the edge of the fog. One was picked up by a human visiting your uncle’s bar. The other—”

“—Was found by Henri,” I finished, heart beating wildly. My palms felt sweaty. I’d wanted an answer for so long, but now I had no idea how to feel. “Was me.”

“Yes,” said the Ancient One.

I could deal with my existential crisis later. As tempting as that cliff looked, I had bigger things to deal with. More important answers to get. I took a deep breath, trying to slow the racing of my heart. “The other was the murderer, right? You said they found you recently. How? Why?”

There was a long pause, like the Ancient One didn’t want to talk about it, but had to. “She was not so lucky as to grow up somewhere that stabilized her existence,” it finally said. “Like yours, her body is not meant to live in one dimension alone. She traveled between them multiple times a day. I could do nothing to help. I had been weakened by the injuries, and even the guidance I had once provided was impossible. I could only watch and regret.”

I thought of my jumps. I supposed I’d always known that they increased the further I got from Griffin’s Edge. They didn’t happen when I was at the bar; it’s why Henri had confined me there when they got bad. I had never thought about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t had a safe, stable home to return to. Jumping multiple times a day since I was little, unable to exist somewhere consistently? That would have been terrifying. Not to mention deadly.

I almost felt sorry for them—her. Apparently the murderer was a she. But that’s the thing: I couldn’t quite pity her. Not after all the innocent beings she’d killed. I might be insane or dead if I’d jumped that much my entire life, but I don’t think I’d become a serial killer.

I mean, I hope I wouldn’t. I don’t think that’s thinking too highly of my morals, considering how low a bar not murdering people is on the moral ladder.

“It hardened her heart,” continued the Ancient One. “She was angry. She wanted answers. And one day a few years ago, purely by chance, she ended up in the dark forests, as you so often have, and came across a harbinger. One of my last followers, and he was praying to me. She thought, as you did, that I might have answers. So she questioned him. She questioned him until he could tell her no more, and she did not believe him when he said that was all he knew. So she killed him. And she used what he’d told her to find me.”

“One of your last followers,” I echoed. Why did that ring a bell?

Luckily, the Ancient One seemed to guess my question. “I believe you know his children,” it said quietly.

It all clicked. Asher and Acacia’s father—he hadn’t just died. He’d been murdered by the very same murderer who was active now. The very same murderer I shared my origins with. And he, accidentally, had led her to the Ancient One.

But that didn’t answer what had happened in the years since. Had her conversation with the Ancient One led her to murder?

I was about to ask just that—to ask about its meeting with the murderer, to try to find out exactly why she was doing it and how I could stop her—and to get somewhere. I felt like I was finally receiving answers, like there was some hope of ending this nightmare after weeks of fear and death.

It’s never that easy, though, is it?

Suddenly the Ancient One went still, and its silver eyes shifted to look at something to my right: another marble headstone. I glanced at it and immediately turned back, because headstones had been appearing and vanishing the entire time we’d been sitting here, and flashes of silver soul had continued to whirl past us and spiral up into the fog. Surely this one would do the same.

But the Ancient One stared at it in reverence, its face fallen into sorrow. “Oh,” it said softly. Its voice creaked, not with age this time but with pain. “Oh. A true loss. Not just for you. For the world. I am so sorry, Ian.”

My heart stopped. “Why?”

The Ancient One finally ripped its eyes from the headstone to meet mine. Even when recalling its past, its gaze had never looked so sad. I think I knew what it was going to say a second before it said it, and I was already on my feet and sprinting into the fog as it whispered the name, the single word echoing around me. Henri.

Any thoughts of hope I’d had moments before had vanished, replaced with sheer, unbridled panic. My brain reverberated with a desperate chant of no, no, no, no, no. The Ancient One, luckily, must have helped out, because I ran blindly in the fog and would have gotten lost if it hadn’t made sure I suddenly appeared on the paths outside the bar, much quicker than I should have.

At the time, of course, I didn’t even notice. I didn’t notice much of anything. Still chanting no, no, no, no, no mentally as if that would be enough to make the Ancient One realize that it had made a mistake and that Henri was completely fine, I barreled into Griffin's Edge.

I shoved through the crowd roughly, ignoring sounds of protest from the patrons. Henri wasn’t behind the bar, which meant he would be in his office.

I took the stairs two at a time, nearly tripping over the crooked piece of wood on the top step. Henri’s office door was open. He never left it open. My blood had turned to ice.

I rushed into the familiar office, only now everything familiar about it was ruined. The fire was out, leaving only smoldering ashes; Henri’s beloved books were ripped from the shelves, pages torn and strewn across the floor and desk; and worst of all was Henri.

Henri, my uncle, my father in every way but blood, my only family—was on the floor, lilac eyes staring up at the ceiling, glassy and lifeless. I fell to my knees beside him, desperately feeling for his pulse, whispering his name over and over, pleading for him to be alive even if I knew he wasn’t. His eyes didn’t look like his anymore. Their soul, their deep intelligence and love and everything that made him Henri, was gone, leaving only a shadow of who he had been.

But it didn’t stop me from crying his name as I took his cold hand in mine and laid on the floor beside him. I cried and cried until I had no more tears left, and then I whispered to him. “I’m so sorry, Uncle Henri,” I said. “I never meant for this to happen. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. I love you.” I choked over every other word. It felt all too real, and yet not real at all.

I don’t know how long I laid on the floor with him, alternating between whispered apologies and resurgences of tears. It could have been forever or only minutes. I’d venture to guess it was closer to forever, though. Turns out I could cry an ocean and still not have cried enough to honor Henri like he deserved, or to fill the hole in my heart his comforting presence had occupied.

Finally, sniffling back a fresh wave of tears, I reached out to close his familiar lilac eyes for the last time. There. Now at least, I could imagine that he was only sleeping, that he’d wake up to comfort me if I came running in after a nightmare, like I had every other night when I was five and terrified of vampires.

He would never do that again. How was I possibly supposed to go on existing when he would never be there to hug me again?

It was another eternity before I managed to get up onto my knees, then slowly make it to my feet. Countless monster fights, jumps between dimensions—and somehow standing up to face the world after Henri had been taken from me felt like the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.

It was then that I noticed something else unfamiliar out of the corner of my eye. Blinking back more tears—you’d think I’d be dehydrated by now, but they just kept coming—I made out that someone had carved words into Henri’s beloved desk: You should have listened.

The heartbreak and sorrow in me immediately turned to anger, fiery hot, drying any tears I had left. I didn’t care if she and I were the same; I wanted to kill her. Murdering innocent beings was already unforgivable. But murdering my uncle because I’d wanted answers? That was a whole different level of unforgivable.

I knelt by Henri. “I know you taught me that revenge isn’t worth it,” I whispered. “I know you regretted your actions against the harbingers. But this isn’t like that. She is a murderer. I know who I am, and I know who she is, and we are not the same. I’m going to end this. For all of the innocent souls who have died, and especially for you. Because I’m not like her. I’m like you. And I’ll be proud of that every minute of every day.”

I straightened up and headed for the door. If I didn’t leave now, I never would.

I looked back one last time, swallowing yet more tears at the sight of Henri and his office. He would have hated the mess. I’d clean it up when, or if, I came home.

Then I closed the door and walked towards the stairs, down the hallway that had once felt like home but now felt foreign, vowing to avenge my uncle—no, scratch that, my father: Henri, the very last griffin in the world.