The room was smaller than the corridor outside, the ceiling lower, the light dimmer.

  Not dark. But deliberate. The atmosphere matched perfectly what we had come to discuss.

  A single narrow window allowed a wash of pale light to spill across a long table set in the centre. No banners. No symbols of rank. No throne.

  This was not a room for spectacle.

  It was a room for truths.

  Laurice closed the door behind us. The sound was soft.

  Final.

  Ruth padded in first, nose low, sniffing the unfamiliar air before circling once and settling near my boots. He didn’t seem at ease.

  Neither was I.

  The room was unnaturally quiet inside, too quiet. I could almost hear the blood rush through my ears as I walked inside.

  Almost as if he sensed, Laurice turned to me.

  “No sound can penetrate this room. We can speak freely here, but you may find the sensation unsettling. Some do.”

  I nodded in acknowledgement, and walked further into the room.

  No one invited me to sit.

  So I didn’t.

  “Start talking,” I said.

  The words came out steady. I was surprised they did.

  Eithna looked at Laurice.

  Laurice looked back at her.

  With the slightest of shrugs, he stepped forward.

  “You wish to understand what the court is deciding,” he said.

  “I wish to understand why I was dragged here and then escorted out like I’m some unstable element,” I replied. “And what exactly I’m supposed to be preparing for.”

  A flicker of something passed between them.

  Not disagreement.

  Recognition.

  Laurice inclined his head slightly.

  “Very well,” he said. “Then we begin with what stands beyond your world.”

  I frowned.

  “Beyond?” I repeated. “Beyond what?”

  “Beyond the boundary you do not yet know exists.”

  That didn’t help.

  Eithna drew a slow breath.

  “There is more to the planes of existence than the world you were raised in,” she said carefully. “You have seen that much already.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Earth and… here.”

  “There is another,” Laurice said.

  The word settled heavily in the room.

  Another.

  “Another world?” I asked.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  I folded my arms.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Laurice did not rise to the irritation in my voice.

  “There is a realm that does not overlap gently with yours,” he said. “It does not brush against it in thin places. It presses.”

  The word was quiet.

  Presses.

  “Presses how?” I asked.

  Eithna answered this time.

  “It seeks entry.”

  My mouth went dry.

  “Entry to what?”

  “To everything,” Laurice said.

  Silence stretched.

  Ruth shifted at my feet, giving a low huff as if reacting to something unseen.

  I forced a breath out.

  “You’re talking about an invasion?”

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  “No,” Laurice said.

  That single word cut clean.

  “Not an army. Not a nation. Not conquest in the way your kind understands it.”

  “Then what?”

  He held my gaze.

  “We call it the Darkness.”

  There it was.

  Simple.

  No ceremony.

  Just a name.

  I waited for elaboration.

  None came.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked. “Darkness like… absence of light? Metaphorical evil? Religious nonsense?”

  “It is not metaphor,” Laurice said.

  “It is not religion,” Eithna added quietly.

  “It is a realm,” Laurice continued, “born in the absence of light. Its inhabitants do not experience life as you do.”

  “And that means?”

  “They do not create,” Eithna said.

  “They do not nurture,” Laurice continued.

  “They do not love.”

  I let out a short, humourless breath.

  “So they’re miserable?”

  “No,” Laurice said.

  His voice lowered.

  “They are hostile.”

  A pause.

  “To what?”

  “To life.”

  The word landed harder than I expected.

  “To end it?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  No flourish.

  No speech.

  Just yes.

  The room seemed to grow smaller..

  I tried to anchor myself, placing a hand down onto the table.

  “Alright,” I said slowly. “If this thing, this ‘Darkness’ exists, why haven’t we seen it? Why isn’t it all over the news? Why isn’t the sky ripping open?”

  “Because it has been held back,” Laurice said.

  “By what?”

  Another pause.

  Eithna looked at Laurice again.

  He gave the slightest nod.

  “Long ago,” he said, “it did not remain contained.”

  The words were controlled.

  Measured.

  “It broke through.”

  Something in the way he said it made the air feel colder.

  “And?” I pressed.

  “And it nearly ended both our peoples.”

  That was not dramatic.

  It was not exaggerated.

  It was stated the way one states a fact that no one argues with.

  “How long ago?” I asked.

  “A long time,” Eithna said.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It is the only one that matters for now,” Laurice replied.

  I raked a hand through my hair.

  “So let me get this straight. There’s some nightmare realm out there that hates life, it’s tried to get in before, and the only reason we’re not extinct is because… what?”

  “Because something stands between it and your world,” Laurice said.

  “And that something is what you’re voting about.”

  “Yes.”

  The pieces were beginning to shift, not into place, but toward it.

  “And if you seal your realm off from Earth,” I said slowly, “that means you think whatever is ‘standing between’ isn’t enough.”

  Silence.

  The silence was answer enough.

  Ruth gave a soft whine.

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly drying.

  “So what happens if it fails?”

  Neither of them answered immediately.

  When Laurice did speak, his voice was lower than before.

  “It will not come as a single wave,” he said.

  “It will seep in.”

  “Through weak points.”

  “Through fracture lines.”

  “Through places where the boundary thins.”

  “And then?” I asked.

  Eithna met my eyes.

  “Then what happened before will begin again.”

  My heart thudded.

  “And what happened before?”

  Laurice held my gaze without blinking.

  “War,” he said.

  Not armies.

  Not politics.

  Just war.

  I looked away first.

  “That’s not possible,” I muttered.

  “You have already crossed worlds,” Eithna said gently. “Your sense of what is possible is adjusting.”

  I let out a shaky breath.

  “And this thing,” I said, “it’s just waiting?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the barrier to fail?”

  Laurice’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly.

  “For weakness,” he said.

  The word lingered.

  “And it’s weakening,” I said.

  That was not a question.

  “No defence lasts forever without strain,” Laurice replied.

  “Strain from what?” I demanded.

  He stepped closer.

  “From the passing of time.”

  A beat.

  “From imbalance.”

  Another beat.

  “From what your world has become.”

  I stiffened. For a brief moment I felt like arguing, but as I started to formulate a retort, images, memories from our world popped into my head.

  Dense smoke drifting over a city. Rivers clogged with plastic. Entire forests cut down. Things I’d never agreed with, but felt powerless to stop. Still his words stung, whether he intended so or not.

  “You’re blaming us.” It came out weakly.

  “I am stating a fact,” he said evenly.

  I stared at him.

  My pulse was loud in my ears now.

  “So this vote,” I said slowly, “is about protecting yourselves from this… Darkness.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Earth?”

  “The Earth,” Laurice said carefully, “will remain where it stands.”

  That wasn’t comforting.

  I looked between them.

  “And the thing holding it back,” I said quietly, “this boundary… this protection…”

  Laurice did not look away.

  “It is failing.”

  The words felt heavier than anything else said so far.

  Failing.

  Not hypothetical.

  Not distant.

  Failing.

  “How long?” I asked.

  Laurice shook his head slightly.

  “That,” he said, “is what we will explain next.”

  He tightened his expression. Looking me straight in the eyes.

  “Before you can decide where you stand. You need to understand what holds the Darkness back and the sacrifices both our kinds made to stop it.