1

Everything freezes.

Then, like a glitch in a screen, the clearing warps in front of you. Jagged lines cut across the scene. In flashes, the colors start to invert.

And suddenly the forest vanishes.

You're nowhere, floating in nothingness.

But then, in an instant, there's something. In front of you, hanging in the air, there are…

…Four…words?

Click to Begin Test.

You don't know how—maybe just by imagining it—

But somehow, in all of the emptiness, you manage to click it.

The instant you do, the first message vanishes, and you're left in a void once more.

For a long moment, nothing happens.

Then something new appears in front of you:

Error: unable to process.

Error

Error

Err—

Next

You're standing in the forest. The clearing is empty.

Next moment, you're awake.

Next

When you open your eyes, your heart gives a terrified jolt. You don't recognize where you are. You don't know if your mind is still tied in knots, trying to make sense of the dream you just had—have you really been using your grandma's laptop that much?—but even as the fog of sleep starts to clear, you remain certain that this isn't the room you usually wake up in.

But as you blink and turn your head, you spot a familiar dresser, and next to it a window covered by floral curtains—and more importantly, you spot your Familiar herself sitting comfortably next to your pillow, enormous round eyes staring at you out of a void of black fur. In that moment, things click into place, and you remember that you slept in your grandma's bedroom last night. It was so late last night when you and Robin finished reading through the diary that Robin ended up crashing at your place, and you offered him your room to sleep in.

When you head downstairs, however, you discover that Robin doesn't seem to have slept much at all. He's sitting at the kitchen table with the diary and your grandma's notes, still trying to puzzle out all of the codes. From the dark circles under his eyes, you don't think he's had any more success than you did last night—and it's only when he sees you coming into the room with Arctus trotting straight for her food dish that he seems to realize just what time it is.

After agreeing to finally have some breakfast, Robin confirms what you suspected: he hasn't been able to figure out anything new about the diary's code. The disappointment is heavy in his tired eyes—although neither of you can deny that you made an amazing discovery, you can't help but wonder what else you might have discovered if you'd been able to read the whole thing. Those mysterious numbers are so tantalizing, leaving gaps wide enough to imagine a whole world of possibilities.

Still, even Robin is forced to accept that without the keyword, you might never know just what it was that Selene Corvina was so consumed with figuring out back when she returned to Silvertree.

But as you put a couple of cereal boxes on the table and sit down by Robin's side, he doesn't close the diary right away. Instead, he bites at his lip and asks the question the two of you had decided to put off until the morning.

"So—what do you think? About the archives? Like I said, it's totally up to you, and if you want to keep it, then obviously I'd never mention it again. But I have to give my presentation in, like, an hour, so if you are okay with it—well, I just need to know."

You hesitate, looking down into your bowl. Last night, you went up into the attic to try and find something that could help Robin, and you were happy for him to read the diary when you found it. But now that you've discovered this piece of your family's history—are you really happy with it being taken away? There's probably a lot that the archivists could learn from it, and maybe they might even be able to decipher the code—but is that what you want? Or now that you have the diary, would you rather it just stay here in the house, with you?

Glancing up at Robin again, you know you don't have much time to decide. But when you weigh it all up, you begin to realize that