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But... There was no dead body.

No bones. No remains. No ancient, molding crown resting on a pillow of rotted velvet. The tomb was simply, impossibly empty, and for a second none of us knew what to do with that.

Then Barney's light swung across the underside of the lid, and I understood why it had needed to be empty.

Three figures were carved into the stone. A Queen, crown lifted in both hands. A Guardian, standing between her and a black, yawning Door. And a Witch, both palms raised, her Magic clearly holding that Door shut.

Exactly– exactly– what Barney's grandmother had written.

I noticed Zelda go still before anyone said a word about it.

"Zelda?"

She wasn't looking at the Witch's face. She was staring at the Witch's hand—at a symbol carved into the palm, a circle wound through with three crescent moons, its ancient grooves worn smooth with age.

"I know that mark," Zelda whispered.

"Please don't say that like that," Martha said.

Zelda didn't laugh. She reached out and touched the carving, and I watched her Magic answer it—the same quiet recognition I'd seen back in the swamp when she'd knelt over that streak of silver residue.

"This wasn't just a Witch," she said finally.

We all waited.

"She was a Baba Yaga."

Something in the room seemed to exhale. That could explain it—why Zelda's Magic had worked when ours hadn't, why whatever ancient power was bound to that Door had recognized her the moment she got close.

It wasn't simply because Zelda was powerful. She was heir to the same mantle the Witch on that lid had carried.

I stepped closer to get a better look at the carving.

I hit a wall.

Not stone. Not visible at all– nothing but empty air in front of me, and then, without warning, an impact that stopped me flat, hard enough to rock me back on my heels.

"Kai?" Martha's voice sharpened.

I tried again. Same wall. Same nothing, solid as a door I couldn't see.

Zelda crossed the same stretch of floor without so much as a flicker of resistance. Barney walked through without noticing there'd been anything to walk through at all. Martha crossed it twice, checking, brow furrowed, before she looked back at me standing there like an idiot in the doorway of my own conclusion.

Roy already knew. I felt it land in him half a second before it landed in me.

"Guardian."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

The Guardian cannot follow.

Swamp Barbie hadn't been threatening me back in that swamp. She'd been stating a fact. Old Magic, older than any of us, and it had a rule with my name written on it in ink I couldn't scrub off.

Martha went from zero to furious faster than I'd ever seen her move. "No."

"Martha..."

"No. I already did this today. I'm still done with everybody deciding shit for me, and I am especially done with it when it's about you." She grabbed my hand and hauled, like sheer stubbornness might succeed where Magic hadn't.