We decided that, on Feast Day, right after we met up with Jake, we could leave for the quest. It would have given us an excuse to proceed without being seen by Mister Winter.

In fact, we all agreed the next step would be trying space-shifting.

It was not that we weren't enjoying the lessons with our friends, but we all felt like we'd failed, and we had to make it right. We had unfinished business --- no one left a quest before it was completed.

Besides, we hadn't told anyone Jake was the spy. We didn't want to condemn him before we could hear his reasons. But that was making me feel further apart from the other pupils.

And it wasn't only that. My friends and I had met a god, and discovered important truths about Set and the council. I'd learnt black magic, battled monsters and changed the memories of a criminal. All of a sudden, I felt as if I didn't have much in common with the other students anymore.

Still, we all did our best for Feast Day. Ohda prepared the butter chicken she'd mentioned, and cups of delicious mango milkshake. Sean brought bacon pudding, a gift from his mother, Bill fixed us up with sodas and cookies from the nearest Tesco (human realm!), Alice and her mother Flora worked on a banoffee pie ice cream, while I scoured the human supermarkets with Bill to find the Blue Clouds cheese I needed for my mother's cheese toastie recipe. Raegan brought the vegetables --- she explained she was a vegetarian who always ate very modestly, without recipes. Jeff helped his grandfather decorate, and Edgar provided Cornish Pasties. I supossed he didn't make them, but they were delicious all the same.

"It really should be snowing," Raegan commented, looking out the window. "It would be beautiful. And when Mister Winter leaves," she winked at me. "I'm going to bring in my real effort for this party ---- Belhaven beer."

I rolled my eyes at her. I didn't really drink, and she knew it.

"Aw, shut it," Jeff said jokingly.

"I'm deadly serious."

"When are you ever serious?"

Raegan rolled her eyes but she didn't look offended. I grinned at Jeff.

Edgar joined us. "Not to be that person," he said. "But I would like to tell you something bad."

"Don't worry," I replied. "You're always that person. You probably can't help it."

"Remember when I told you I would look for the tomb of Silver McQueen? I've looked. For weeks. Days spent inside every library I know, even using my powers to locate every book about cemeteries, deaths, census and famous Enchanters. But no one... No one knows where Silver McQueen is buried. Except for a text... It claims he should be buried in Brighton, in the Human Realm, where part of his family was from."

"We should simply... look in every cemetery. In this area, there are only seven," I tried to sound upbeat.

Jeff nodded, but he looked really pale. Then, he said, "I've got something to declare, too. Lately using my powers hurts more than it did before. It's really, really painful... my nerves are inflamed. I don't know how I can possibly space-shift, and survive in another world. Or even face Jake."

"I've got the solution for that!" I exclaimed. "But we should leave as soon as possible if we want to catch Jake, too. You see, when we were crashing at Vitaly he went to buy panacea to a herbalist shop. The owner, Annika Smirnov, was a friend of his. I imagine from the Russian side of his family."

I had told the others, briefly, that Vitaly was really related to me. But talking about it was still weird.

"Of course," Raegan said. "We exchanged gifts and pleasantries. Let's leave now, before Mister Winter is back. I'm just sad about the beer."

Thankfully, the herbalist shop wasn't far from the Academy, and the streets weren't crowded because almost everyone was in the streets, celebrating.

The owner had elfin features and I couldn't really tell if she was young, or the same age as Vitaly, or neither. She had high cheekbones, almond shaped eyes and pale pink hair. She smiled at us.

"Come in! I have a few products I want you to see."

"How do you know who we are?" I asked.

"Are you kidding? I'm close to Vitaly Malinov, and everyone knows who Jeff Tanaka is."

Jeff blushed, and we made ourselves comfortable. The shop seemed to be Annika's house. There were tables, chairs, even a fireplace. Annika made us sit near the fireplace.

"I don't live here alone," she explained, gesturing at the cozy furniture and opening a door to what looked like a warehouse. "I have a wife, but she's out buying groceries for tonight's Feast."

Annika came back from the warehouse and showed us a few ampoules.

I grabbed one that contained something yellow and sticky.

"That is an antidote against the wounds of nature that belong to other worlds," she explained. "After all, you're going to change the world, as I heard it. Your quest will be in another dimension."

Then, she showed us an ampoule containing a dark blue liquid. It was the same colour as her eyes.

"This cures most wounds. It won't make you impossible to kill, but almost... pour it on the body part where you were wounded and this will heal it nicely."

"I thought panacea could do all of that and more," I said.

"Panacea can cure you mostly from diseases, like cancer for instance," Jeff explained. "Or wounds that are not so deep. I'm sure the liquid in this ampoule works better on the deep wounds, the ones that would fester if you don't cure them."

I was starting to feel nauseous, though I'd never admit it. Why couldn't this be a quest where you used intellect instead of strength? Not that intellect was my forte. It was just how I'd told Edgar — I relied on it, but it betrayed me. My hyperactive mind was too overcrowded and I lost focus too easily.

And there was more — I'd tried not to think about it, but there's only so much time you can keep the thought that you're about to enter a new, unknown dimension away from your mind.

"That's cute, but we need a tonic for Jeff," Raegan said. "A special kind. He was jinxed during his last quest, and now using his magic gives him pain."

"I've got something that could help him," Annika's eyes shone. "It won't cure you at once, Jeff Tanaka, but it will help you with the pain. And if you finish the whole bottle, I have a good guess that your curse will be either lifted, or become more tolerable."

The tonic inside the ampoule looked slimy and green.

"One last thing," she added. "Brady and Vitaly want to help you space-shift. You don't have the coordinates, do you? They said if I ever met the four of you, I should warn them, and you could proceed immediately. You're missing an Aeon, and an Enlightener. I'm the Enlightener."

"I've always wanted to know what an Aeon was," I said, without thinking. The truth was that we should have told them about Jake.

"Only Jophiel, or whoever is hosting the powers, can be an Aeon. A non-binary person who can stop space and time is always required for space-shifting. So without the god's help or blessing, no one could do it," Annika smiled. "You should count yourselves lucky that Vitaly is on your side."

We exchanged glances. We really were. Perhaps it was better to sit out our meeting with Jake --- he couldn't spy on us in another dimension, and take all the help we could get.

At first I wanted to make conversation with the two women, but I was starting to get anxious. However, we thanked Annika and Karine from deep in our hearts for the ampoules they gave us.

Being back at Vitaly's house was like a dream come true --- in more than one sense. During the weeks I'd spent at the Academy, I often dreamed I was back with Vitaly and Brady and we completed the quest.

"Does it have to be today?" I asked Vitaly. I wasn't going to pressure him, but it was the only thing I could say without blurting out the truth about Jake.

"Today might already be too late," Vitaly said. "The sooner the better. I think it will be fitting, if it's you, Ryan, who draws the magic circle in the Stars Room. After all, you're the one who wrecked the ceiling last time."

I took a white piece of chalk and drew the circle like Vitaly explained. Sadly I wasn't the best at drawing geometric figures, but the result was not too bad. It closely resembled a circle, and it was nine feet wide.

Vitaly opened up a book and showed me some symbols. "Draw those symbols here, from number one to number nine," he said. "In the same position as the stars you see on the ceiling."

Well, that was one mystery solved. Now we finally knew what the Stars Room was for. It surprised me that we had one at the Academy, too. Perhaps many years ago, people had space-shifted there. Mabe even Vitaly and Samuel themselves.

"I knew you were non-binary, because Jophiel was genderless," Edgar told Vitaly. "But I never asked you for your pronouns."

"I use he, but they as well."

Everything was prepared for the quest. We were wearing some of the best clothes we had at the Academy and we packed others. We had food and drinks, though Vitaly insisted that we could probably find ways to eat and quench our thirst even in the other worlds. Brady, however, was not convinced, for he said that other worlds tended to be uncharted territory.

"We will tell you a few more things," Brady started out. "First, your ability to create portals will be required, Edgar!"

"Is there going to be water? I want to make myself useful," Raegan said. I wondered when my turn was going to come.

"There surely will be water. As for a portal, it would help you get anywhere in this world, right?" Brady continued. "It works for other worlds too. Not in the sense it gets you between worlds — only space-shifting does that. But in the sense it can get you from one place to another even in a different reality."

"That's good, we might need that," Jeff muttered.

"And I did want to tell you something else about the future," Vitaly said, looking into my eyes. "Since I know the most curious out of you cannot fathom how you can both live in a world where we cannot tell the future, and in a world where there were such a thing as prophecies"

Edgar held up his hand like a nosy student. "You said it yourself that there are rules the destiny follows and quests represent cyclical phases of tropes and..."

"Yes and no," Vitaly cut him off. "You're of course, mostly right. But there is actually an old story, about the gods, and I'd like to tell it to you."

"You told me before that one couldn't see the future," I told Brady.

"This story is a prequel to the Empty Mirror," Vitaly continued. "It's called The Two Faced Prophecy.

Before Asclepius found out about the Empty Mirror, Tyr began to grow suspicious of his brother Set, whom he thought would one day kill him. He travelled and found, at last, a reality where someone could tell the future. The name of this person was Avos and she wasn't happy to help the god. However, despite her fears, Tyr showed her how his powers helped balance the world. His power was justice, not goodness, but it was close enough in that time and age.

Figuring that she was doing nothing wrong, Avos told Tyr that he would not be killed by Set. Instead, one day, he would kill his brother.

That was the truth, according to her. She saw in her vision Tyr's quest to find something or someone that helped him defeat his violent brother, and she saw this outcome. But remember, Asclepius hadn't found out about the Empty Mirror yet.

Then, Asclepius found out about the Mirror. The story tells that that same night, Avos had another prophecy in a dream and saw Tyr die by Set's hand. She couldn't understand how this could be, for she did not know that in the meantime, the object was retrieved by Set himself who, looking inside of it, saw Tyr as his biggest enemy and killed him. There were two possible outcomes — like Schrodinger's cat. But the Enemy Mirror made the other one become true."

We all stayed silent for a while. I thought it was a good story. But perhaps, those were a little more than stories. I mean, if the Empty Mirror was real, and the gods among us, what else could be real?

"This is a profound and reasonable explanation," Edgar said. And then he added, snapping me out of my daydreams, "But Tyr is alive and well today. I'm sure it is what it seems --- just a very good story about the multiple futures."

"Now," Vitaly added. "Step on one of the symbols Ryan drew."

"Next time," Edgar muttered. "I hope we get someone who doesn't have a shaky hand."

"Hey! My hand wasn't shaking."

"I refuse to believe this chicken's scrawl is your usual penmanship."

"Shut up, the two of you!" Brady told us. "The nine symbols represent air, light, darkness, death, rebirth, balance, fire, water and earth. Jeff, stand on the symbol for the air. You, Raegan, will take balance while Edgar takes light, Ryan takes darkness, Annika takes rebirth, and Vitaly takes death."

"The most important two," Vitaly said. "Because they literally mean death and rebirth of the particles in the two universes we're crossing. I gather you can imagine we could be up to nine, though we're not."

The symbols weren't easy to decipher — they all looked very geometric. However, mine was Edgar's opposite and he, quite obviously, found his in a matter of minutes.

"So," I asked. "What do we do?"

"There's a Mudra for it," Vitaly said, and showed us.

When the six of us gathered in the positions and performed the spell, I understood quite literally why it was a kind of magic that required deep knowledge of the dark arts. Spells are physical too — hunches, body pain, anxiety... all of those things mattered. So I took it as the real deal when I felt a shiver unlike any other run through my body, and I had the peculiar sensation that the universe, as it was, was splitting in two. A part of it that was right, and that I wanted to keep living in a while longer, and a part that was just bad.

"Your guesses are right," Vitaly told me. "If you hadn't learnt how to master black magic, then you wouldn't have been able to separate the two realities. And if you don't separate it, no one knows what you will bring to the other world."

"And which world is it?" Raegan asked. "Do we visualise it?"

"You have to visualise the world where you could find the Empty Mirror. If it works, then it will lead you to the right realm."

"Is it that easy?" I asked. However, I had my doubts it would even work — it probably wasn't as simple as it looked.

When Vitaly gave the sign, the six of us concentrated on our respective spells. I felt a head-splitting headache. Looking around, and seeing the pained faces of my friends, I could tell I wasn't the only one.

Then, I found myself in a different place.

At first I thought the spell had already worked, but then I noticed my friends weren't there with me. For some reason, I could tell I wasn't lost. It felt...

Well, it was a stupid thought. But it felt as if it was the inside of my brain.

"Who's to say that it's not?" I wondered aloud. The place had water everywhere, but my feet weren't wet. I decided not to get bothered about the details.

And then, I noticed that it was a library. The blue-ish shelves were full of blue-ish books. I tried to grab one, but the moment that I opened it, it closed back again in my hands.

"You're not supposed to read that," I heard Vitaly's voice say. "There are things we don't have to know forehand. Don't worry — your brain will get there when it needs to."

"What the hell are you saying...?" I asked, but the library disappeared.

I was back in the Stars Room, and in the magic circle there were two worlds.

What I mean is that there was a planet-like sphere that looked just like a miniature Earth, and another where the green and the blue were all wrong. And they were juxtaposed.

"What do we have to do?" Jeff asked. "Do we jump into that other world?"

"Wait for it," Brady said. And as he finished speaking, the strange Earth merged with the one we all knew, and it was the only holographic image in the circle.

"There's no need to jump, as you aptly put it," Vitaly added. "You'll get to that other place in no time. We call it KI."

Of course it had to have a name. Vitaly had been there before. It only made sense that he had catalogued this new world.

"Can you tell us a bit about it?" Raegan screamed. It was hard to hear over the buzzing noise that the holographic image made.

"It doesn't follow the same rules as Earth, but thankfully it's pretty close," Vitaly replied. "So it makes sense that you will sleep, eat and drink. It also makes sense that you'll get tired, be able to use your magic and there is gravity."

"Well, that's more than I was expecting," I said, the anxiety lifting off my stomach like a heavy load.

"However, it won't look like anything you've already seen, and you'll notice it soon enough," Vitaly warned. "It looks like... like some fairy tale village, it's a way to put it. But it's obviously much bigger than that. And technology doesn't work there, but it's not a problem for a common Enchanter. However, Barnes, I hope you weren't bringing your phone."

I huffed. "Of course I wasn't going to," I lied. I took my phone out of my pocket and I threw it out of the magic circle.

"Had you made any single mistake and let that thing end in the circle," Vitaly pointed out. "Consequences would have been irreparable."

And then, I understood what Vitaly meant about white and black magic. I'd never thought of the universe as good versus evil. Actually, I always believed in many shades of grey. However, at that moment, I could feel two forces swirling around me, one that felt just, good and just... right. The other force felt destructive, terrible and purposeless. I decided to banish it. I could feel that my friends were doing the same.

"Had you never learnt black magic," Vitaly said. "You would have never been able to control it."

I felt myself disappearing, and wished that Vitaly had at least told us some kind of 'good luck' or gave us other precious advice.

But then, the Russian Enchanter did say something, under his breath,

"When you make a decision that ends or changes the world, I hope you remember what I told you. I hope you think of me, and remember how human the gods can be."