Amity huffed as she brought the cup of apple blood to her lips, sipping on it while surreptitiously looking around the Owl House. Over the past three years, ever since the human Luz Noceda had stumbled into their lives, she had come to see this place as a second home. Heck, she might even argue it was her first-ever home, since the mansion held memories too bleak to really remember with any semblance of fondness, even a year after her parents had been shoved in the Conformatorium.

The living room was much the same as it always had been. Piles of garbage, both human and magical, lined some of the walls, which breathed; Amity would never get used to that. A few pictures hung beside the door. One was of Eda, King, and Hooty posing in front of the house. Another, larger one was of Luz and Eda in the middle of a game of Hexas Hold’em, at which the former was presumably losing spectacularly. A third photo depicted Luz and Amity holding hands, sitting on the very couch Amity occupied right now. She stared at it for a few moments, remembering.

It had been a beautiful night. Luz had suggested they have a sleepover in the living room, which Amity had been unable to refuse. It hadn’t taken long for her parents to find out about her relationship with Luz and promptly kick her out. Eda had been graceful enough to let her stay with them for as long as she needed to, and Luz, ever the ball of sunshine, had been ecstatic. She had asked Eda to take that photo with her… tiny scroll rectangle thing to commemorate the occasion.

It surprised her how nostalgic one picture made her, and before long she was wiping a single tear off her face. Would they have kept adding photos onto the wall had Luz been here today? It pained her to think of the memories they missed out on ever since… No, she could not get distracted.

Not today.

Today, she had a mission.

It was, as Eda had put it, the culmination of everything they had worked so hard for over the past eight months. It had to go perfectly; otherwise, the entire thing could be set back months. She had to do this.

For Luz…

“Something on your mind, Boots?” Eda’s voice broke through her train of thought, and she shot her a groggy frown. “Boy, you look terrible.”

Amity let out a humorless laugh. “Thanks for the honesty,” she said, finding her voice much raspier than she would have thought after half a cup of apple blood. “I’m just nervous.”

Any teasing tone left Eda’s voice as she put a comforting hand on the young witch’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s gonna go great,” she said softly, sitting down on the couch beside her. Eda would deny it to her dying day, but she had really grown into her maternal role ever since meeting Luz. “You want me to come with you for backup?”

The seventeen-year-old shook her head. “I have to do this alone,” she muttered.

“You do know I miss Luz too, right?” Eda said, which was honestly kind of a low blow, but she pushed the thought aside. If they could just get the new portal working…

“I know, Eda,” she said, shaking her head. “I just… I promised I’d do this. Besides, one person will be better for stealth.”

The Owl Lady looked like she wanted to protest but she pursed her lips and stood up, nodding. She made her way back to the kitchen. Before she closed the door behind her, she turned to Amity and offered the little witch an encouraging smile, her golden fang glinting. “Luz would be proud of how hard you’re working to get there. She did always want to show you around the Human Realm.”

Amity found she did not have a response to that, so she just smiled and turned back to her cup, now almost empty. She stirred its dwindling contents with a spoon absently, lost in thought. It wasn’t that she did not want Eda there. In fact, she knew the Owl Lady was still a force to be reckoned with, even after losing her magic, and thus would be a fine partner in this particular journey. But if being a Blight had taught her anything at all was that keeping your word was important. Over the past year, she had battled her inner self over how best to fulfill that promise. Maybe this wasn’t the best way to go about it, but it was the only way she knew how.

After a few minutes, she heaved a breath, left the cup on the coffee table, and exited the Owl House. Hooty extended himself slightly and gave Amity a half-hearted smile, wiggling in front of her.

“Good luck, Amity,” he said in an annoyingly high-pitched voice, but lacking the flair he’d had when Luz was around. It seemed even the house demon missed the overly-enthusiastic human.

She mounted her staff – Ghost perched on the tip as always – and took off toward the left Knee. It was much less populated than the right one, on account of it breaking up over the years and turning into a sort of archipelago. But if Luz’s echo mouse was to be believed, or the human Phillip Wittabane for that matter, there was at least another small deposit of Titan’s blood in a cave somewhere around there.

It had taken the echo mouse over a year to spew the entire contents of Phillip’s diary, but she had finally secured what she thought was the final piece of information necessary to build another portal. Most of it was currently sitting in the Owl House’s backyard, with a slot atop the key waiting for the final ingredient.

Amity had spent the better part of that time procuring the rest of the materials needed for a fully functioning portal, with help from Eda, Willow, and Gus. It was a testament to how much they all loved Luz that they worked as hard as they did, and Amity could not have been prouder to call them her friends. But now, at what she hoped was the end of their journey, she had to do it alone. She had promised Luz she’d try, at the very least.

The left Knee loomed ever closer to her, its landmass divided by the Boiling Sea’s winding paths between the smaller islands. She saw that most of it was covered in copses of deep purple trees. For a few moments, she scanned the area surrounding the thickest trees, looking for a safe place to land. Phillip’s diary had said that the cave was located near the south end of the Knee, but had not described its contents beyond the object of her pursuit. Apparently, the human had not needed to resort to this place after his dreaded journey to Eclipse Lake.

She landed on the coast of the largest piece of land, just north of the left Calf. Her hair, much longer now and whose brown roots were once again peeking from behind a curtain of lavender, was windswept. She vanished Ghost into non-being and walked inland. The afternoon sun shone above her, making her cast a long shadow over the white sand. Ahead of her, white gave way to orange and purple as the beach turned into a forest, the tops of its trees forming a large canopy that blocked out even the faintest tendrils of sunlight from seeping in.

A dark path led directly into the forest, winding every which way. Not ominous at all, Amity thought with a frown. As she approached it, she cast a small light spell – which reminded her painfully of Luz – and let it float over her right shoulder. The path itself did not seem witch-made, its edges jagged and uneven, sometimes taking nonsensical turns that could have only been carved by years of animals trudging through the overgrowth.

As she walked, the only sound around her being her soft footfalls on fallen leaves, she had the distinct impression that she was being watched. Her eyes darted through the darkness, searching for any sign of life, but none came. Whatever or whoever was out there, they were being extremely quiet. Her guard up, she marched on. In truth, she was not sure this was the right path, but the diary had mentioned something about a forest, so it was her safest bet.

Well, safest was a bit of an overstatement. The prickly feeling on the back of her neck kept her on edge as she made her way through the overgrowth. Eventually, after what felt like hours, she stepped into a clearing. It was barely larger than a Slitherbeast in diameter; the inner trees were much smaller due to the lack of exposure to sunlight and the earth beneath her feet was coarse. She noticed, with a shiver down her spine to accompany the discovery, that the dirt was covered in tracks, and they seemed fresh. They made a rough circle around the perimeter of the clearing and then retreated back into a small path on the opposite side of her. Through the shrouded darkness and with help from her light spell, she could just see grey rocks lining an enormous gaping hole on the side of a rise in the earth, pitch black and dauntingly deep.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered as she forced one foot in front of the other to approach the opening. Her small ball of light did little to cut into the darkness ahead of her, and she wondered if the space was made dimmer through magic somehow. The brown soil gave way to a gravelly path down into the cave, her boots crunching it loudly in the otherwise undisturbed space.

While the cave itself seemed natural enough, with rough walls that looked on the verge of cracking and no discernible path beneath her feet, it unnerved her how little ambient noise there was here. Usually, in the Boiling Isles, you could never get a quiet place to yourself for long before a blood-curdling cry or a low growl broke the silence and had you running for your life.

Here, however, it was quiet enough that she could hear her heart pumping madly in her chest. One steady beat and her foot would crunch gravel. Another beat and her light spell would flicker, casting elongated shadows on the walls. Another beat and a hiss echoed through the cavernous walls, and she froze.

Ahead of her, for the first time, she could see the barest hint of natural light seeping through a crack in the ceiling, falling over a small opening she could not clearly see. Behind her, the hissing grew louder and she turned on the spot, brandishing her staff. Her light spell dissipated as her concentration flickered back to her new, unseen foe and she was plunged into near darkness. Through the black veil, two sickeningly yellow eyes opened and stared right at her.

She took a step backward towards the spot where the light bathed a section of the cave and raised her staff. The creature in front of her advanced slowly, almost teasingly as it took its time sizing her up. Sunlight crept its way down onto its body and she gasped. It was the largest wolf Amity had ever seen, with drooping ears and bared fangs. It stood a few feet above her, peering down at her with those lantern-like eyes. Its fur was midnight black, allowing it to seamlessly blend with its surroundings. Its tongue, dangling freely from its open mouth, was forked like a snake, and instead of a growl, soft hisses emanated from it.

Amity wasn’t going to waste the beast’s hesitance. She drew a pink circle with Ghost and yelled, “Abomination, RISE!”

A wall of purple goo erupted from the ground just behind the beast, encircling its body as it hissed violently, pawing at the ground and thrashing. She stumbled backward, looking through the dim light for anything that might help her, but too late. The snake-wolf broke free, biting into the abomination as it dissolved, its power lessening as Amity’s heart rate accelerated.

The wolf pounced, its sharp claws only deterred by a quick spell circle Amity drew, resulting in a mediocre vine that shot out from a seed Willow had given her a few days before. Somehow, despite her shoddy plant magic skills, it was enough to send the wolf off balance as she sidestepped the vine, almost crashing into a large rock that she had somehow missed in the middle of the opening.

She crouched behind it as she heard another hiss and a shower of rocks fell on her. The wolf’s enormous paw had swiped at her hiding place, breaking off a piece of it in the process. She barely had time to process it and leap out of the way before another claw slashed down. This time, she was too slow. It grazed her left arm, ripping the fabric of her coat and drawing blood as she yelped.

Instinctively, she drew two small blue circles and a number of small rocks appeared where she was a second ago, letting her sneak off to the side behind the now-pulverized rock in the middle of the room. While the wolf pawed at the new addition to what she assumed had been its lair, she inspected her wound. It wasn’t too deep, and the blood staining her coat appeared to have stopped flowing as much. While she wasn’t terrible at healing magic, especially now that Empress Lilith had allowed students to broaden their studies to any branch of magic, she was far from an expert. She had read of the side effects of an improperly cast healing spell and was not about to test it now.

Grunting, she unbuckled the belt that held her coat tight around her and tied it around her upper left arm. Luz had taught her this little trick back before their confrontation with Belos in the throne room. Lot of good it did us… she thought ruefully. Shaking her head out of her very unwelcome thoughts, she stood and drew a pink circle, summoning the abomination sludge she kept as a reserve in a small pouch at her hip, forming a hammer-like fist over her right hand.

Taking advantage of her distraction, she burst out of her hiding place and put her entire weight onto a punch to the beast’s midsection, smirking when she heard it howl in pain. The wolf staggered to the side, side-eyeing her maliciously and baring its fangs. With surprising speed, it pounced and slashed, but Amity was ready this time.

She reformed the abomination goo into a small net. It trapped the wolf’s lower half so it could not move while the rest of the abomination reformed again to entrap it in a tight grip. The wolf let out even louder hisses, struggling with all its might against Amity’s restraints.

She could not fail, not when she’d come this far.

Her concentration never wavered as she held the beast in its place, looking around for anything that might knock it out for good. Her illusion rocks had vanished, leaving only the decimated piece of stone that had stood in the middle of the conspicuously circular room.

Wait a minute…

As beads of sweat clung to her forehead from the exertion of keeping the wolf at bay, she noticed for the first time that the room did seem oddly shaped. Despite the rest of the cave’s roughness, this space was very evenly crafted to hold the stone that had sat in the middle, which she now realized had been a small pillar. In the dim light of the sun seeping through the hole in the ceiling, Amity could just spot something from within the rubble the wolf had created. Something glowed in there that had not been glowing before. Something… blue.

Her eyes flew open and her small lapse in concentration cost her dearly, as the wolf’s restraints slackened and the beast was able to literally claw its way out, ripping the abomination sludge to shreds before turning to Amity with a snarl.

Amity’s eyes darted from the wolf to the glowing piece of rubble, to the ceiling, and a plan formed in her mind. A half-baked, ludicrous plan that would have made Eda – and Luz, she thought with a pang – proud. She recalled the sludge back into her pouch and cast a pink fireball in her right hand, letting it drop onto the ground as it glowed before fizzling out. It had worked.

The wolf’s attention was drawn to the light that emanated from the spell, if only for a second, and that was all the time Amity needed. She darted to the other side, casting the largest abomination she could muster with what little magical energy she had left and yelling, “Abomination, seize!”

The abomination did her bidding while her feet carried her to the center of the room, where the pedestal that contained what she now knew to be Titan’s blood had stood. As she heard a pained hiss from the wolf when the abomination followed her command, she produced a small vial from her coat pocket and peered into the rubble, pushing away a few stray rocks. The blue substance was held in what looked to be a small bowl embedded into the pedestal itself. She tried not to think of the reason this might be so heavily guarded as she used the vial to scoop up as much blood as she possibly could, putting a stopper on it.

The wolf seemed to have made short work of the abomination once her concentration was held elsewhere, which she only noticed when a low growl resounded through the cavernous room and she whipped her head around to see the beast charging at her. She was pleased to see it had a limp on its right front leg.

Summoning her staff, she drew the largest green circle she could and directed the resulting spell at the ground between her and the wolf. A wall of green erupted from the dirt between the cracks in the stone, though it wasn’t as powerful as the first time. It did buy her the time she needed to mount her staff, as the wolf had to leap over the vines and tried taking a big swipe at her. It barely missed her, and she summoned yet another pink fireball in her hand to send flying at the ceiling. She aimed for the crack that was barely illuminating the room.

By some miracle, or maybe the destructive intention with which she threw the fireball, the opening cracked and crumbled, bits of rubble falling at her sides as she dodged the larger chunks and made herself as small as possible. Hearing one last threatening hiss behind her, Amity flew through the hole and into the afternoon sky. The bright copses of trees, bathed by sunlight, were such a jarring contrast to the dimly lit cave and the forest path that she had to let her eyes adjust to it for a moment.

She floated sidesaddle on her staff for a few minutes, doing her best to calm her racing heart. Beneath her, she could just make out the ceiling of the room she’d just been in, hiding among the purple tops of trees that seemed to stretch for miles on end. After her breathing had evened out, she took a moment to check on her left arm.

The belt – Luz had called it a tourniquet – seemed to have done its job. Her injury, though it looked gruesome and hurt like hell, was no longer bleeding. She had a feeling that if she removed the belt, the opposite would be the case, so she opted against it. Instead, she rummaged in her coat pocket and retrieved the vial.

It contained the blue substance, sloshing around as she moved it, and she had to repress a chuckle because she did it. This might actually work.

With one last look back at the vast forest of the left Knee, Amity urged Ghost forward and flew west toward the Owl House. The trip itself was as uneventful as the trip there, which gave Amity enough time to come to terms with the fact that this journey – the one she and her friends had undertaken after their fight with Belos – might be coming to an end soon.

She should be relieved, happy even. But right now, as she flew over the outskirts of Bonesborough en route to the Owl Lady’s home, the only thing on her mind was dread. How had she spent so much time building the portal itself and not thought about what she would say once they got it open? How could she possibly face her after so long…?

Amity pushed those thoughts away as she approached the Owl House, about an hour later. She landed near the edge of the clearing in front of the house, trying to give herself some time before she had to face Eda and her ministrations for being injured. As much as she wanted to deny it, Amity knew Eda was a mother at heart. And a good one, at that.

Once again, she vanished Ghost and slowly walked forward, nursing her left arm as it throbbed uncomfortably. She loosened the belt a tiny bit, remembering what Luz had told her about blood circulation. It did feel a little better now, if she was being honest. If anything, the physical pain of her injury was almost enough to match the emotional one running through her mind.

Her respite lasted all of about five seconds before Hooty extended his weird tube body through the clearing and almost crashed into Amity’s face. He only stopped when he spotted the glare Amity was sporting, which usually meant a beating was coming his way if he did not back off. Fortunately, he had learned his lesson over the past few years.

He followed her progress through the empty space up to the house until she arrived at the door and Hooty silently opened it for her. Not wanting to forget her manners, she thanked him and walked in, only to almost be knocked over by Eda.

“What happened, Boots?” the older witch said, holding Amity at arms’ length and checking up her up and down. “I saw you coming from the window.”

Amity grimaced. “Uh, there was… a wolf, I think,” she said simply when Eda found her tourniquet and gasped.

“Here, let me take a look,” said Eda, inspecting her left arm. She grabbed Owlbert and turned the staff clockwise, drawing a few small circles over the small witch’s arm. Amity felt the familiar sensation of a healing spell washing over her and the pain dissipated almost instantly, though her arm was still a little numb. “I was never very good at healing magic, especially with my magic all but gone, but that should do it for now.”

“Thanks,” Amity mumbled, looking down at her feet.

“What is it? Was it a dead end?” Eda asked, a little apprehensive.

Amity shook her head. “No, I found it,” she said, retrieving the vial from her coat pocket and handing it to the Owl Lady. “I’m just… tired.”

Eda looked down at the vial, a dejected look on her face before she closed her eyes and stuffed it in her hair. How she ever found anything in there, Amity had never found out. The wild witch helped Amity forward and onto the couch in the middle of the living room.

“Here, lie down for a bit,” she said. “Rest up, the portal can wait.”

Amity wanted to protest, but the stern look Eda gave her shut her right up. For about twenty minutes, they both sat there silently, looking down at the ground. Amity wondered if Eda, much like her, was contemplating what having this vial meant for their mission. At some point, Eda stood up wordlessly and offered Amity a new coat to replace the damaged one, and she took it with a grateful nod. The tourniquet came off with only a little pain shooting up her arm, and she managed to change into the proffered garment. Eventually, Amity cleared her throat and straightened up.

“I’m ready,” she said resolutely, taking a deep breath.

Eda eyed her. “You sure about this, right?”

Amity had never been surer about anything in her life. She had made a promise to Luz, and she would be damned before breaking it. She opted for a simple nod and the two witches made their way to the backyard, where their new portal lay.

The door itself had been carved out of Palistrom wood with an intricately woven design, which reminded Amity of the mahogany furniture at Blight Manor. In the middle of the door stood something Phillip had dubbed the Eye of Agamoto, which could only be obtained from the belly of a Selkidomus baby. Amity didn’t know how Eda had procured it without killing the poor thing, but she had never wanted to ask. Its black iris surrounded by yellow resembled the eyes of the snake-wolf, and she had to blink a few times to get that image out of her head.

Beside the door itself, they had carved a little pedestal where a key hung. Much like the door, it had a similarly carved eye, though this one was made out of Palistrom wood and painted blue. The wood itself, both in the door and the key, was embedded with every ingredient Phillip had enumerated in his diary, through magical means provided by all their friends.

This was it.

Eda and Amity approached the door and Eda took out the vial from her hair. With a sigh and a glance at Amity, the wild witch unstoppered the vial and poured the blood into the tube they had installed in the pedestal. The liquid flowed slowly down into the handle of the key, glowing faintly blue. Amity took it as a good sign that as the blood seeped into the key, the eye within the door itself began matching it in intensity.

Once every drop had been carefully funneled into the key, the glowing stopped. Amity stepped forward and grabbed it, inspecting it in her hands. It looked no different from before, but she was not deterred. She glanced back at Eda.

“Go for it,” the woman said, and that was all Amity needed to hear.

She reached with her uninjured hand for the keyhole and inserted the key. She could not quite describe the immense wave of joy and relief that washed over her as it clicked and the door glowed a bright blue, folding in on itself like the old one had and turning into what looked like a briefcase. It stood there for a moment before Amity clicked the eye on the handle and it extended again, yellow light spilling from the edges. With trembling hands, she turned the door handle and pushed.

Instead of the rest of the backyard, the world beyond the door was unlike any Amity had ever seen. Green-topped trees spread out ahead of her, with deep brown trunks illuminated by a dazzling sun. On the grass, she could barely spot a path that she knew led to the Noceda household.

Amity almost burst into tears at the sight of the Human Realm, her entire body shaking. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see a smiling Eda, the golden fang glinting in her mouth.

“You sure you wanna do this alone?” she said softly, glancing at the door and then back at Amity.

She nodded. “I have to, but I’ll be back in no time. I… don’t want to drag this out any more than it has to.”

Eda frowned but nodded in agreement, stepping back to let Amity have some space. The young witch took a deep breath and took a few steps, walking through the threshold and finally – after over a year of hard work – arriving at the Human Realm. She turned behind her and closed the door, pocketing the key for safe-keeping. The last thing she saw through it was Eda’s warm smile and waving hand.

With renewed resolution, Amity made her way down the path laid out in the grass by years of people walking it. Behind her stood a dilapidated house that looked on the verge of collapse and seemed to be held only by magic, which Amity wouldn’t have put past it…

She walked for what felt like hours, maybe days until she spotted the back of a purple-shingled white house. A chimney stood to the far left of the roof. Even though it was clearly the middle of the day, Amity could just make out a light turned on in a room from a second-floor window. It was definitely much more modest than the mansion she’d grown up in but seemed almost… homier because of it.

Finally, she reached the porch and stood there frozen, unable to bring herself to do it. Could she do this? After so long, would she hate her for coming? Heaving a deep breath and telling herself that she was already here, she raised a hand and knocked on the door.

It felt like an eternity before Amity heard footsteps on the other side and saw the door swing open to reveal Camila Noceda. She was wearing a light green shirt over comfortable-looking pants of the same color. Her red-rimmed glasses were a little askew as if she had just put them on hastily. Her hair, almost the same shade as Luz’s had been, was pulled up in a messy bun.

“Hello?” Mrs. Noceda said, peering down at Amity curiously. The girl noticed the woman’s eyes land on her ears and was grateful that she did not comment on them.

“Hi, Mrs. Noceda. My name is Amity,” she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’m… a friend of Luz. May I come in?”

To her horror, Camila Noceda seemed almost on the verge of saying no, with a slight frown on her brow. Instead, the woman nodded slowly and stepped back to let Amity in.

“Thank you,” Amity whispered before walking in, the door closing behind her.

The living room of the Noceda residence was rather small. It held only a couch with a loveseat beside it, both of them facing the black rectangle Luz had told her was called a television. Between them, there was a small coffee table that had, to Amity’s surprise, two cups of tea set on a tray.

“Please, sit down,” Mrs. Noceda said, gesturing to the couch. The witch complied and sat down a good distance from Camila, who took her place at the loveseat. “What brings you by… Amity, was it?”

“Yes,” said Amity, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat and offered Mrs. Noceda a small smile, but she was almost sure it must have come out as a grimace. “You see, my name is Amity Blight and I’m a wi…” she trailed off, her eyes fixed on the stairs. Or rather, on the person coming down the stairs.

At the foot of it stood a girl that looked about her age, with straight brown hair coming down to her shoulders, bright brown eyes Amity had seen a million times in her dreams, and a dazzling smile on her face. It was Luz Noceda.

But… it couldn’t be. This was impossible. How…?

“Lu – Luz?” Amity stammered, her eyes wide with fear and tears threatening to spill from them.

Luz tilted her head, looking from her mother to the witch, a confused look on her face. “Uh, hi?”

Amity swallowed. “But how are you here? You’re…” She looked at Mrs. Noceda and sighed, her brain much too scrambled to make sense of this situation.

“You’re dead.”