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A glimmer flickered in the shadows beneath the bower. Then—a door. It didn’t appear so much as unfold , pulled from somewhere else. Its edges sharpened, contours settling into reality. Faint glyphs shimmered across the wood, pulsing with an iridescent glow.

Cori turned to him. “Going into a Stitch—and I cannot overstate this—is like boarding a sinking ship. It’s unstable, the ground feels shaky, and the laws of physics get weird. Don’t wander off. If I lose you, I could really lose you. Do I make myself clear?”

“You’re really selling this experience.”

“I wasn’t aiming for comfort.” Cori approached the door and pressed her palm to the surface. The runes flashed from white to red. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Azura reset the passcode since I was last here.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s a suspicious bitch who doesn’t like anyone but her meddling.” A pause. “And because this is her vault. Technically.”

“I thought it was a prison.”

“It’s also that.”

She hadn’t changed a bit, no matter how many years separated them. Taly—in this case, Cori—was still just as reckless and infuriating as the day she was born.

And Shards damn it, now he was curious.

What could drive the Time Queen to such lengths? What did she need to bend time and seal away entire realities just to keep it hidden?

And what did Cori want with it? Why all the secrecy?

“I thought the two of you were supposed to be friends in the future,” Skye said.

“We’re friends,” Cori answered distractedly.

From her fingertips sprouted golden threads that anchored to the surface of the door, shimmering in the air like a crisscrossing lattice.

Her eyes had a faraway look. “But friends don’t tell each other everything all the time.

She has her secrets, I have mine, and sometimes our goals contradict. ”

Cori dropped her hand. The threads dissolved. “Guess we’re just going to have to brute force it.” She straightened. “Speak the key that binds the realm.”

The runes glowed brighter. Waiting.

Cori said, “Azura is the most powerful High Lady.”

The runes flashed red.

“Azura is the most cunning High Lady.”

Again, red.

“Azura is the most beautiful High Lady.”

Red.

Skye asked, “Is there a point to this?”

“I’m just going through her favorites.” Cori growled her frustration. Calcifer knowingly patted her cheek. “Damn it. I think I know what it is…”

This revelation didn’t seem to bring her any joy. She took a breath, steadying herself, and grimaced her way through it.

“Ivain is my sexy battle daddy.”

The runes flared green.

“That bitch,” Cori muttered.

Skye was equally horrified. He had to ask. “Azura and Ivain… they didn’t.”

“Oh yeah. A long time ago. It was hot, heavy, and Azura has never moved on.”

Skye shuddered. He didn’t want that information in his head. “This is utterly surreal…”

But the wind stirred his hair. The ground held firm beneath his boots. Real enough.

Maybe this was what going insane felt like—when your senses agreed with you, and your brain politely disagreed.

He pinched himself. The pain was immediate. Unfortunately, it didn’t transport him back to a world that made sense.

He tried again. Different arm. Just to be thorough.

The wind still blew. The ground still held. And nothing— nothing —snapped back into place.

“Hey, stop daydreaming, loverboy.”

Cori was already through the door. And it was closing.

He had a choice to make. But some choices weren’t choices at all.

Following her? That was instinct.

Hurrying to catch up, Skye slipped through right before it slammed shut.

The door vanished behind them. The air smelled… off. Stale. And it was too quiet. Not a single bird or insect buzzed in the forest around them. There was no breeze.

At the end of a weed-choked gravel drive, Infinity’s Edge rose against a storm-dark sky. Lightning flashed, illuminating the shadow of something behind it. Like crosshatching on a dark canvas, the image faded back into the storm clouds, waiting for the next strike to bring them back to life.

Were those the threads Taly always talked about? Maybe here, in this fractured space, they became visible to the naked eye.

The towering front doors of the palace creaked open to a long receiving hall. Inside, shattered pillars hovered where they had once stood—more compact at the base, their broken pieces drifting outward as if the stone near the ground remembered its shape, while the rest had already forgotten.

“Like I said, physics gets weird in the Stitches.” Cori’s voice echoed through the cavernous, hollow space.

Moving deeper, past frescoes flickering between images and shattered furniture hanging weightless in the air like suspended debris—yeah.

Weird was the right word. The walls warped if he stared at them too long, and the light would occasionally fluctuate, casting alternate shadows and brightness.

Doors, debris, even the vines hanging from the ceiling would suddenly move, there one second, somewhere different the next.

“You still haven’t told me why we’re here,” Skye said. On a nearby table, a vase rattled in place as if possessed.

Cori glanced over her shoulder, a cold, wet wind that blew from nowhere ruffling her hair. “Because I need you to help me steal something. This is Azura’s vault. And after years of painstaking negotiation with the bastard she locked inside, he’s finally agreed to give it to me.”

“The bastard being the mad mage who almost destroyed time itself?”

“Bingo.”

This was not his Taly, but Skye could still read the tension in her shoulders.

“What did you promise him?”

Silence .

“Cori.” But he had a sinking feeling he knew the answer. “It’s me, isn’t it?”

She whirled, walking backward. “Just a conversation.”

“Oh, great,” he hissed. “That’s so reassuring.”

Regret festered. Of course, she’d brought him here for this. Of course, she hadn’t warned him. That was the worst part—he wasn’t even surprised.

Why did he keep doing this to himself? Always following, never asking nearly enough questions.

Maybe he was a masochist…

“Look,” Cori sighed. “If there were another way, I would’ve taken it. We’re at a critical juncture in the Primary Timeline. I should not be taking you out of it. But I can’t kill him, and he’s outsmarted me every time I’ve tried to just take it.”

“Oh, well, now I have to meet him,” Skye said dryly. “Here I thought you were the smartest person in the universe.”

That might’ve gotten him a glare with Taly, but Cori took it in stride. “He has to give it to me of his own free will, and that Shard-sucker is refusing because I’m the only person he’s spoken to in eons, and he doesn’t want me to stop visiting.”

“So promise you’ll visit!”

Her hand smacked her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that?

” Then she rolled her eyes. “This guy is a shadow mage—he can smell deceit like it’s cologne.

And while, yes, I could tell him that I really value our friendship and the time we’ve spent together and that, yeah, we should really do this again sometime, what he’s going to hear is that as soon as that key is in my hand, I’m never stepping foot in that horror show of a tower ever again. Bloodcrafters are so… freaky .”

How did she do that? How did she take regret and turn it back into curiosity in an instant?

Skye had never actually met a bloodcrafter. Those who survived the Purge were all imprisoned at Gloomrend Gaol—for their safety as well as that of everyone else. They were all wholly mad.

They turned down another hallway. The temperature suddenly dropped like they’d passed some sort of threshold.

“Why me specifically?” His teeth were chattering, and he hugged his body for warmth. “Why did this… keeper want to speak to me?”

“Well, you see, sometimes the threads of destiny weave themselves in fascinating ways, bringing together individuals at unique moments—”

“You’re not going to tell me. Got it. Is there some kind of rule that time mages can’t give straight answers?”

“Answers given freely may not always be what they seem.”

“Wow, you are just full of bullshit.”

“I’ve had time to practice. Besides, we’re here. He can tell you himself.”

Cori stopped in front of a doorway that looked identical to every other they’d passed. There was nothing to tell it apart besides a bloody handprint streaked beneath it. As if someone had been dragged.

“Cheery.” But Skye’s voice fell flat in the stillness. Nothing moved, absolutely nothing, no matter how far his senses fanned out—it was unnerving.

“I’m going to keep this short,” Cori said. “Tell him the truth. Don’t lie. If shit goes south, Calcifer is going to pull you out.”

“Are you sure you can trust that thing?” Skye asked. The monkey, who had wriggled out from inside her coat to perch on her shoulder, gave him the stink eye. “This would be an easy way to get rid of me, just saying…”

Cori looked him in the eye. “You are a part of my past that cannot be altered. If Calcifer gets rid of you now, he gets rid of me. You don’t trust him with your life.

That’s fine, smart even. But I trust him with mine, which means that in this instance I also trust him with yours. Can you accept that?”

Skye nodded. He could. As much as he disapproved of the monster’s choice of diet, at this point, he couldn’t doubt its loyalty.

“Is everyone ready?” Cori asked.

No, but Skye nodded anyway. As did the monkey.

“Great. Let’s get this the hell over with.” Then Cori pushed open the door.

Skye felt it like a silent wave washing over him. An invisible force surged from inside the tower.

Cori froze mid-step.

There was no thunderous boom or crackling energy. She just… stopped , like someone pushed a button.

On her shoulder, Calcifer had—unsurprisingly—vanished. It probably wasn’t the right time for I-told-you-so’s , but it did make Skye feel marginally better knowing that he’d been right.

He reached for his dagger—too slow. From the dark beyond the door, a whip lashed around his throat.

No, not a whip. It was a-a rope , a… tentacle.

It writhed with ghastly fluidity, made of dark, viscous liquid. Blood, it smelled like. The reek of it rolled through the door, coating the air, clinging to the back of his throat.

Skye’s hands shot up, clawing at the thing constricting his windpipe. His fingers slipped against the wet, pulsing surface.

No traction. No breath. Black spots bloomed in his vision.

The thing jerked.

He stumbled forward, heels dragging.

Then another lash. Then another.

Two more tentacles caught his ankles and yanked.

He fell. One palm slapped the stone floor.

And it slid with him, slick with blood, dragging a red line into the dark.