"Thank you," Gran said, patting Viktor on the back as we left the house.

"It was my honor," he replied, being unusually reserved. Outside, no evidence remained the Veil had ever been there, he'd somehow cleaned it all up. Sure, the landscape was damaged, but that fit right in to the rest of the junk piled up around what could charitably be called our yard.

High overhead, the edges of tear in reality writhed slowly around the sky, seeming closer than ever. Somehow, I was far less intimidated by it now that I had my family. Liam calling it the 'sky butt crack' may have also helped, even if it earned him a little pop on the back of the head from Gran. It was hard to take it as seriously with a name like that.

Together, we walked away from the house, probably the last time I'd see the place I spent a good portion of my life in. I was feeling fairly numb from everything, so leaving it behind didn't really register the way I expected it would.

István had pulled up in truck before we got too far. How he'd known where we were was beyond me, but Viktor didn't seem surprised.

"Do it again!" Liam said, as he sat in the back of the transport, the same as we'd use on Rift recovery. The cloth sides were waving around as István deftly weaved through the streets heading back towards our building, his driving as precise and controlled as his penmanship.

"She is not to use her Nebula," István said, looking back briefly.

Viktor reached a big hand over and very gently gave Liam a pat - which was all for the best since it looked like a ten-gallon hat sitting on his head. Poor kid would probably get brain damage if he hadn't controlled himself.

"Do not worry, little friend," Viktor said, "You will get to see it more, soon enough. The Moon Lady has something she needs Charley to do."

I was a bit curious how Viktor knew Celistar was related to the moon. It's not like she introduced herself as a lunar spirit or something. It occurred to me that her pale appearance did really evoke the celestial body, but at the same time it was always tinted by the pollution in the air, so the cool, almost blue light I had seen when I first met her wasn't what we saw anyway.

Then again, Viktor had instincts out the wazoo and seemed to understand a lot about the world subconsciously, which included his Nebula usage. Him 'knowing' that information because 'it felt right' wouldn't surprise me at all.

Alessa had set next to Gran in the back, staring out into space while the older lady patted her shoulder in a slow rhythm. She had more memories of how mom was before we lost my father, so this whole sequence of events was especially hard on her.

Before long, we could see the building again. Behind us, the massive tear in the sky had to have widened more, as the empty space in the center was even bigger. We heard peals of thunder on occasion as giant lightning bolts shredded the air in front of it, leaping from one side to the other as the natural insulation of the atmosphere failed to overcome the raw destructive power it represented.

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"That isn't going to get us, right?" Liam asked, as I unloaded him from the back of the truck, which consisted of me just bracing his fall as he leapt off of his own accord. Safely on terra firma, he trailed along behind me as we walked towards the building. Some sort of construction was there. Dozens of the stabilizing hooks of the sort we used for rifts snaked away from a device in the center that appeared to be a smaller version of the building itself.

All of this stood in the center of a clearing, around which a half dozen support members of the team were aggressively digging, while the remainder stood around with some angry looking weaponry of the sort that István had used back in the desert - covered with Seals and glowing.

István caught my look and walked over. "It is grand, is it not?" He asked, gesturing up at the building. "Who would have known that this entire structure is actually a source of power in its own right."

"Wait, what?" I asked, staring at him like he had Steeve growing out of his forehead. Which, I mean, definitely possible with the way she behaved. We hadn't seen the little fox since she had laid my mother to rest, which I could understand as that likely took a lot out of her. I hadn't even been the one doing the magic and it took a lot out of me, even if the toll was more emotional than anything else.

"Your mentor…"

"Celistar."

"Yes, Celistar - she give me instructions on how to utilize this building for its true purpose. Apparently it is constructed from what they used to call a 'spirit stone'. This means that the entire object is a powerful source of energy we can use to escape our current predicament." He gestured towards the tear in reality. Calling it a Rift seemed to do it a disservice.

"Did she tell you what that thing was?" I asked.

"No, she said more explanations would have to wait until we got where we are going."

"Going? Where? And how are we getting there?" I asked, utterly confused at this point.

"She just said, 'home'. I will say I do not know what that means." He confessed.

"I might have an idea, but it makes no sense." I said, "So, what do we do?" I wasn't about to give up on any opportunity, no matter how slim or outlandish, to save my family.

"I was hoping you would know," he said, "I have done everything as instructed so far."

"I don't…" I began, but then all of the sudden, I did.

I walked over to the pedestal, the mini-building in the center of the dais they were excavating in the plaza area we were all in in front of the place we'd been using as an office. I set my hands on it, and injected a sliver of Nebula.

This created some sort of chain reaction where the little bit of energy I provided expanded in power before filling the entire stone easily, the feeling of which surprised me so much I almost let go. I immediately turned on my vision, feeling a little bit of a pinch as I did so, but nothing as bad as what had happened back in the Umbral Veil's base. I watched as the swirling Nebula in what was probably some sort of control stone drained into a very complex seal embedded in the dais itself.

The platform I was standing on - or in, I guess, since it was in the bottom of a shallow hole at this point that was still being dug out - lit up from the center out, as many hundreds of Glyphs lit to form layers of Seals.

István's eyes were glowing as much as the Seals themselves, I swear. Might as well have been a kid in a candy store with how much science he was getting to geek out on.

As the layers of engravings reached the edge, a set of four larger seals lit up, one for each cardinal direction. As each ignited, we felt more so than heard some sort of thump or clunk from deep below us. It sounded like the latch for a trunk snapping shut, only the trunk was the size of the city.

An extra deep and final rumble echoed throughout everything around us as all four flared up before settling, a noise to rival the distant thunder of the tear in the sky.

I wasn't sure how Celistar had known this was here, something to ask once the danger to my family was past, if that ever came to fruition.

My story could just as easily end when the monstrous tear in the sky consumed us all. But that was not the ending that would be written, if I had anything to say about it.

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