Laurice’s last words hung in the silence like a weight.

  Before you can decide where you stand.

  Decide. Me. That meant I had choices, good…

  This time a nervous laugh did slip out.

  As if any of this was something a person could simply choose their way through.

  I drew a breath that felt too shallow to be useful.

  “Alright,” I said, keeping my voice level by force. “Then please explain it.”

  Laurice didn’t move. He didn’t relax. He looked at me the way someone looks at a door they know won’t hold forever.

  “You asked how long,” he said. “But that isn’t the first question.”

  “It’s the first question I care about,” I snapped, then caught myself. Ruth lifted his head at the sharpness in my voice and watched me, ears tipped back.

  I forced the edge down. Taking a moment to let my muscles relax.

  “Fine,” I said. “What’s the first question?”

  “What holds it back,” Laurice replied.

  I stared at him for a beat, then gave a humourless laugh.

  “I literally just asked that.”

  Laurice gave a small smile.

  “And now you’re ready to hear the answer.”

  I didn’t like the implication in that. As if my readiness mattered at all.

  “Alright,” I said again. “What holds it back?”

  Laurice’s gaze shifted briefly to Eithna.

  Not for permission.

  For alignment.

  Eithna gave a small nod, her expression tight.

  Laurice spoke.

  “There is a boundary,” he said. “A construct laid between your world and the place we named.”

  “The Darkness,” I said.

  He inclined his head once.

  “It is not a wall,” he continued. “Not stone. Not iron. Nothing you could touch with your hands.”

  “Then what is it?” I asked.

  The room felt smaller. Not physically, nothing had changed, but the way air changes when the weather is about to turn. I could feel the tightness.

  Laurice’s eyes held mine.

  “It is a barrier,” he said. “Woven. Anchored. Sustained.”

  I folded my arms tighter without meaning to.

  “So,” I said, “a shield.”

  “Closer,” he allowed.

  Eithna spoke quietly, as if each word had to be placed rather than spoken.

  “It was made when the Darkness first pressed through,” she said. “When it broke into our world.”

  I remembered the way Laurice had said it only minutes before.

  It broke through.

  Not it tried.

  Not it threatened.

  It did it.

  My throat tightened. I coughed awkwardly, trying to clear it.

  “And it stopped it,” I said.

  “It held,” Laurice corrected.

  That was worse.

  Held implied strain.

  Held implied effort.

  Held implied that it could slip.

  I stared at the table, at the pale band of light on its surface, at the dust I hadn’t noticed before, floating lazily through the beam like nothing was wrong with reality.

  “Okay,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I intended. “How is a barrier like that… maintained?”

  Laurice didn’t answer immediately.

  He let the question sit, as if the shape of it mattered.

  Then he said, simply:

  “No barrier can sustain itself.”

  “It must be fed.”

  The words landed with a dull finality.

  Fed.

  I blinked once.

  “Fed with what?” I asked.

  Eithna looked away first.

  Just a fraction.

  But enough to set something cold crawling up my spine.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, sharper. “Don’t look away like that. Just tell me.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Laurice’s voice remained even.

  “With life.”

  I let out a breath through my nose, half laugh, half disbelief.

  “With life,” I repeated. “You’re telling me there’s an ancient magic shield powered by… what? Blood? Sacrifice? Souls?”

  “No,” Laurice said. “Not like that.”

  “Then explain it.”

  Eithna’s eyes came back to mine.

  “There are currents in living worlds,” she said carefully. “Patterns. Cycles. Balance. The things your kind doesn’t notice because you were born into them and call them ‘normal’.”

  “Seasons,” I said, trying to make it concrete.

  “Among other things,” she replied.

  Laurice stepped closer to the table, resting his hand on its edge.

  It wasn’t a dramatic gesture.

  But it anchored him, as if he was bracing.

  “The barrier draws from the world it protects,” he said.

  The words were plain.

  Too plain.

  My stomach sank before my brain caught up.

  “You mean… Earth,” I said.

  Neither of them answered.

  They didn’t need to.

  The silence did it for them.

  I stood very still. Waiting for them to continue. They didn’t.

  Some distant part of me wanted to reject it. To laugh it off. To call it impossible.

  But I’d already crossed worlds.

  I’d already stood in a court where people wore armour grown like bark and spoke my name as if it had been written into their history.

  My sense of what is possible is adjusting, Eithna had said.

  Now it adjusted once again.

  I swallowed.

  “And it’s been drawing from Earth,” I said slowly, tasting the words like something poisonous. “This whole time.”

  Laurice didn’t blink.

  “Yes.”

  I looked down at Ruth automatically, as if a dog could offer a counterargument.

  He just stared back, steady and confused, then lowered his head again with a soft huff.

  “Why would Earth even have something like that to give?” I asked. “You’re making it sound like, like the planet is a battery.”

  “It is not a battery,” Laurice said. “It is a living system.”

  “And you’re siphoning it.”

  Eithna flinched at the word, almost invisible. Her shoulders tightened.

  “We are not siphoning,” she said, more firmly than she had spoken all conversation. “The barrier was made to take only what could be spared. It was designed to be sustainable.”

  “And it isn’t anymore,” I said.

  Laurice’s gaze held mine.

  “No defence lasts forever without balance,” he replied.

  I felt heat rise behind my ribs.

  “So you’re telling me that while we’ve been fighting over oil and pretending recycling is going to save us, there’s been some ancient defence mechanism draining the planet…”

  “Careful,” Eithna said quietly.

  I stopped.

  Not because I’d been ordered to.

  Because I heard my own voice and realised I was shaking.

  Not with fear.

  With anger.

  And something else underneath.

  A kind of sick clarity.

  I pictured a motorway at night, rivers of white headlights, the constant hum of people going places they didn’t need to go.

  I pictured the news I scrolled past at breakfast. Fires. Floods. Arguments.

  I pictured the way everyone always assumed the world would continue to hold.

  That it was built for us.

  That it would take whatever we did to it and remain.

  I licked my lips.

  “So,” I said, quieter now, “Earth has been carrying this.”

  Laurice nodded once.

  “And we didn’t even know.”

  “No,” Eithna said.

  There was no accusation in her voice.

  Just a kind of grief.

  I stared at the window slit, at the pale light crawling across the table.

  “How is that… fair?” I asked, and immediately hated how childish it sounded.

  Laurice didn’t mock it.

  He didn’t soften it either.

  “It was the only way,” he said.

  Eithna stepped closer, her voice gentler.

  “Our kind left Earth because it could not sustain two advancing civilisations and the barrier. That was the cost of survival.”

  My throat tightened again.

  “So humanity was left with stewardship,” I murmured, the word feeling suddenly weighted. “And we’ve been… what. Failing.”

  Laurice didn’t say yes.

  He didn’t need to.

  He let me sit in it.

  I felt Ruth press against my leg again, the same grounding weight as before.

  I reached down without thinking and rubbed behind his ears, my fingers moving on instinct, needing something ordinary.

  I looked back up.

  “Okay,” I said, forcing my voice steady. “If the barrier is failing… What does failing actually look like?”

  Laurice’s expression tightened.

  “Thinning,” he said. “Weakening. Places where the boundary can be forced.”

  “Crossing places,” I whispered, remembering his earlier phrasing.

  “Yes.”

  “And once those appear…”

  Eithna’s eyes met mine.

  “Then what we named will try to push through,” she said.

  I breathed out, slow.

  “And your court is voting to seal Tir Na Nog away.”

  “Yes,” Laurice said.

  “To save yourselves.”

  “To save our people,” he corrected.

  “And Earth?” I asked.

  A pause.

  Then, carefully, Laurice said:

  “The Earth will remain where it stands.”

  The words were polite. He had used them before.

  The meaning wasn’t.

  I stared at him.

  “So you’re shutting the door and leaving us to…”

  Eithna cut in, voice low, controlled.

  “Dwight.”

  The way she said my name stopped me.

  Not because it was sharp.

  Because it was pleading.

  As if she wanted me to understand something without saying it aloud.

  I held her gaze.

  And in that moment, I understood at least this:

  Whatever came next, it wasn’t going to be something I could rant my way out of.

  Laurice spoke again, and his voice was quieter now, as if the room itself demanded it.

  “There is one more thing,” he said.

  My stomach sank.

  Of course there was.

  “When the barrier was made,” he continued, “it was not made cheaply.”

  I swallowed.

  “What do you mean?”

  He didn’t look away.

  “It required more than power,” he said.

  A beat.

  “It came at a cost.”

  The silence after that felt deeper than anything the room’s enchantment could create.

  “Cost,” I repeated, and my voice came out thin.

  Laurice’s expression hardened just slightly, as if he was preparing me for what he was about to say next.

  “The kind of cost,” he said, “that leaves its scars on history.”

  Eithna’s hand moved, almost unconsciously, to her wrist.

  A small gesture.

  A private, old pain.

  I watched it, and my chest tightened, as I imagined what something like that could possibly cost. I almost didn’t want to ask, but I knew I had to.

  “What did it cost?” I asked.

  Laurice held my gaze.

  Then, very quietly:

  “That,” he said, “is what you must understand next.”