“Come on,” Isaac cries, and he and Amelie hurry up the last of the stone steps. Isaac’s legs are wobbly, and he falls and smacks his knee on the second-to-last step, and then he realizes that the ground is moving in all directions at once.

“Earthquake,” Amelie shouts—shouts because it’s unbearably noisy. Walls begin to collapse, blocks of stone crash to earth, people scream and shout, animals bray and bellow and bark, and still the earth rocks and rolls, up and down and back and forth. Isaac and Amelie try to run for the center of the terrace but are tripped by blocks of stone that heave out of the ground that boils as if it is water.

It grows darker by the minute.

The man wearing the pendant is trying to run toward the blank wall near the center of the complex. The snake, too, makes for the wall, so Isaac pulls Amelie to her feet and yells, “Run,” and they stumble onward as the earth continues to heave.

The man makes straight for the wall and then Isaac sees it. The eternity knot is carved into the stone in the center of the wall.

“There,” Isaac shouts. “But . . .”

The man reaches the wall, only a few tens of yards ahead of them, but he might as well be on the other side of the ocean. The snake is close behind the man, sliding up and over the heaving and rolling earth.

Isaac and Amelie run and trip, continuing to follow.

In the middle of the confusion and fear and noise, with people falling to their knees and reaching hands heavenward, the man stops and places one hand on the wall. A door materializes there out of the stone—a great carved wooden door—and it’s open.

The man turns and sees the snake. He makes a sound, and the snake slides up the man’s leg and then his arm and freezes, a bracelet again. The man does not seem surprised, which surprises Isaac.

Isaac feels the tick-tick-tick of the watch against his palm, but he knows he must follow that man and snake.

He yanks Amelie’s hand as the man steps through the door and vanishes, and the door begins to fade.

“Hurry,” Amelie cries, and they both stumble for the fading door, reaching it just as it’s almost gone. Isaac pushes against the wall and clutches the watch to his chest. He feels the pendant press deep and cold into his skin, so cold it burns.

Isaac wishes for that door to stay open, and then yells out loud, “Please, door, appear and open.” Without any warning, it stops fading and re-forms in the wall, shimmery at first, and then real and made of wood, and it’s just barely open.