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“Did she just teleport? Where’d she go?” I look at Kat in alarm. Everything is shaking, and it’s disorienting, even though I know we aren’t being affected by it.

“I don’t know—Jìngyi is figuring it out,” Kat says.

Outside, horses neigh frantically and people shout and run for cover.

Jìngyi closes her eyes, drawing runes in the air in rapid succession as she reads the glowing responses. It only takes a few minutes, but it feels like an eternity.

Another tremble pulses through us, this one stronger. Books tumble off the desk, knocking scrolls and papers out of the way. Jìngyi loses her footing, but she finally gets the information she needs and draws her own teleportation spell.

I feel dizzy as the memory follows Kat’s mom and Jìngyi to her new location.

The pueblo building melts around us to reveal high tiled ceilings and tall bookcases.

Outside, across the street, is a massive building.

The factory, I assume. Los Angeles in this time is lit by the soft glow of lanterns and candles, but there’s an unnatural white glow coming from the sheath of thick windows gracing the length of the factory, beaming out.

All around us are the quiet whispering pages of books—and something else, something ominous and present that I can feel through the memory.

Kat shudders. “There’s mana everywhere. Raw mana, like during a surge. But it feels different. It feels angry, like it’s been disturbed.”

“The Ritual is always cast at the Central Library?” I ask aloud.

Kat nods.

This must be one of the older buildings. There’s no time to sightsee as Jìngyi bursts into a run, and the memory goes murky as we all try to keep up.

“No!” Jìngyi screams, dashing toward a forbidding glow at the center of the darkened room.

Victoria catches her breath, and I can see tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

I don’t have to understand complex spellwork to know it’s too late to stop what has started.

Victoria places a gentle hand on Jìngyi’s shoulder. The comforting gesture isn’t felt by her ancestor, whose anguished face concentrates on the tableau in front of her.

Clarabelle is floating above the floor, her eyes closed, body shaking with the movement of mana. Runes have taken on a life of their own above the now inert diagram, pulsing in a torrential storm around her, glowing fiercely blue, like the heart of a fire.

Clarabelle’s face is contorted with pain, arms outstretched as she struggles with the energy flowing through her.

The spell has lifted her completely off the floor, her boots barely scraping the central rune glowing with power.

Her dress seems entirely electrified, every thread pulsing as her skirts billow around her.

There is no light in the library except the sheer power and potential here in the circle.

Three figures approach behind us. I guess they’re the mages who became the cornerstones for the first Stabilization Ritual. I only recognize Yazmin Choudhury, a famous prophetic mage of the era from my recent readings.

“We couldn’t stop Richard,” a man with a goatee says. “What’s Clara doing—”

Jìngyi sobs out the words. “It’s too late, she’s going to channel the earthquake’s energy instead, but it’ll kill her—”

Yazmin interrupts with a steady, resolute voice. “The instability of Richard’s spell, the power released by this earthquake—it’s catastrophic. It will tear the city apart.”

The other mage, a short man with an elegant turban, nods in agreement.

“Clarabelle’s spell is brilliant, and she redirected the mana flow away from the factory workers, but it still needs to go somewhere.

” His gaze grows heavy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize at the time she was planning to channel it herself—I thought the earth would be a better conduit. ”

“ You knew it would kill her! Clarabelle told you what she was working on and you hid this from me!” Jìngyi cries, her voice racked with betrayal.

Yazmin’s voice goes cold. “We did what was right. You would have been too sentimental about this.” She looks at Clarabelle, whose unseeing, glowing eyes are trapped in the moment.

“I saw so many versions happen, but they all…” She shakes her head.

“Our world will break into two. Lives will be lost in this disaster, not just those in the factory. None of us will survive this, and our descendants will carry this burden—”

Jìngyi turns back to her colleagues, tears shining on her face. “I won’t let it happen.” Something hard sets in her jaw; she’s made a decision.

Jìngyi steps forward, shaking off her friends’ attempts to stop her.

She takes a skein of floating runes in her hands, her skin searing with the touch as she handles it like a rope.

Jìngyi’s body starts to glow, too, her skin emanating with blue intensity, luminescence shining out of her eyes as she reweaves it behind her.

“What is she doing?” I ask Kat. I’m horrified, helpless to watch this woman try to save the one she loves, trying to save—everyone.

“She’s reworking the spell matrix,” Kat whispers in awe. “I’ve never seen that done with anything as complicated as this as it was cast.”

“Magic is about intention,” I repeat, one of the first things Kat said to me.

Kat’s mom is staring thunderstruck as well, and I gulp, trying to grasp the enormity of this moment.

“I love you,” Jìngyi says to Clarabelle. “I won’t lose you.”

Outside the circle, the other three mages deliberate anxiously, but their voices are getting dimmer and dimmer.

“What if we redirected it, to release over time?” Yazmin grabs a sheaf of parchment out of otherspace and pulls it out. “Starting here. Anwar, let’s use your time-release spell, do you think this should be open-ended or should we set it…”

Anwar takes out his own research and they all get to work. Kat and her mom watch with interest; this must be the answer to what she was looking for this whole time, but as the men start to set down glowing gemstones and draw rapid runes in chalk around the circle, it all starts to fade away.

It’s a memory of a memory, and if Jìngyi can’t hear or see them, neither can we.

Jìngyi is floating now, too, as she reaches Clarabelle and presses her forehead to hers.

Clarabelle’s eyes focus as she sees Jìngyi in front of her.

There’s nothing visible outside the circle, only the glowing energy flowing all around us, looking to answer the question that has been asked.

The angry, vengeful power I felt entering the library has now shifted to something else, no less powerful, but taking on what these two women feel for each other.

And I can feel it, too—I don’t know if it’s the memory, or what Victoria is feeling, or her interpretation—but it courses through me, real as anything—Jìngyi’s fear, her determination, her stubbornness, and most of all, her love.

For Clara, for the helpless workers trapped in the factory, the innocent civilians in the city who are at the mercy of this earthquake, for her colleagues rushing to support her.

“I love you, come back to me.”

“You need to let me go,” Clarabelle says. “I’m barely holding on to this as it is. The world—the world is breaking, and I can’t stop it. I’m giving it all I can.”

“I know you are,” Jìngyi says. “But I won’t—I refuse to lose you.”

Everything I can barely hear from the mages outside and what I know of history confirms it’s too late. It’s just damage control now. What Richard did to the earthquake has already run its course, and the leftover energy is what Clarabelle is trying to channel now, so the world doesn’t…

I gasp in understanding. My world. Kat’s world. Two halves of a whole.

“The world, or me?” Clarabelle asks softly.

“We’re both here now, and Yazmin and Anwar and Gregory are anchoring us outside. We can do this together.”

“There’s only so much you can modify, and you know that.” Clarabelle gives her a sad smile.

“Don’t ask me to choose,” Jìngyi says softly.

“I know you, Jìngjìng. You love every sunrise and sunset, you see the potential in every student, you see hope in everything. But you’re here now. You must understand what is possible, being here in this spell.”

I gulp. I know what it feels like, when you invite the energy of the universe into you. The spell can only run its course now.

“Richard didn’t know what he was doing when he tapped into the earthquake’s power for his factory.

I understand the price now. The world is going to break, but the energy— that’s where it’ll all go, not the earthquake, which will be significant, but not the terrible calamity Yaz predicted, and you—you and everyone in Los Angeles will go on.

The world will break, and I am going to die. ”

Jìngyi takes her hands and squeezes. “I won’t let go,” she says with every fiber of her being, so much that I can feel it more than a hundred years later.

“I love you, and I will not be without you. The world is not meant to break. The world can’t be whole without you. I can’t be whole without you.”

This must somehow be the question the mana had been waiting for, and the entire spell diagram flares incandescent now with the answer.

I have to shut my eyes, and even then I can see the raw mana flowing in the air, flowing through Jìngyi and Clarabelle, and through the memory walkers—Victoria, Kat, and myself—standing next to them, past and present colliding all at once.

The earth shakes again, and I know we aren’t here, but I reach for Kat anyway to hold her hand, to steady her. She’s crying, tears falling from her face as she watches this impossible thing happen in front of us, and we can’t do anything about it.

As sudden as it started, it stops. When the light fades, we’re back in the museum. But the memory isn’t over. Kat’s mom is still standing in front of us, her eyes brimming with tears as she clutches her notebook.