Title is adapted from this quote by Rosangel Perez: "She wanted a new beginning, so she opened the door and walked boldly into the unknown."


The good thing is, none of the kids have sigils.

And how strange it is, to think of that as a good thing, when not too long ago, Hunter was trying to trick these exact kids into becoming part of the Emperor's Coven. He's glad, suddenly, that he failed; ferociously glad that the kids are still free.

After all, if they had sigils, they'd be burning right now, just like his.

Hunter takes a look at his glowing sigil under his glove, then exchanges a quick look with Alador. He can see Alador's sigil glowing as well, but neither of them say a word. In their quick glance, they've both made a decision; they're not going to tell the others about their sigils, not until they have to. There's no reason the kids need to know.

(Hunter isn't that much older than them, not really, only a few years, but right now, they look so young, and Hunter feels ancient.)

The kids watch the coming eclipse worriedly, and Amity shoots her father a worried look, but no one seems to remember the sigil on Hunter's wrist. It's alright; Hunter is young to have a sigil, almost absurdly young. Most sixteen-year-olds don't have one, but he got his when he became the Golden Guard.

He remembers it, remembers looking at his bare wrist and asking his uncle - in private, of course; he wouldn't question the Emperor in public - if he really needed to get the sigil at all. It wasn't like he had any magic for it to constrain, after all, and-

(And he'd been thirteen and frightened and not sure he was really ready for this-)

His uncle had fixed him with a look that turned his blood to ice. "How would it look," he'd asked in the quiet voice that meant Hunter had really, really messed up, "if the Golden Guard, the Emperor's own nephew, had no sigil?"

Hunter had taken it back immediately, had stumbled over his words in a messy apology. It hadn't worked; he'd gotten his sigil branded over a heavily bruised wrist. Or maybe it had worked, because his wrist wasn't broken, at least. It could have been worse.

He has the feeling that's one of the things from his past that he thinks is normal but would make Willow and Gus look at him with pity and sorrow if he said it aloud. There seem to be a lot of things like that.

The burning in his sigil increases steadily, and Hunter fights the urge to grip it. It won't help, he knows that, and the others don't need to know how much it hurts. He'll keep it hidden from them as long as he can.

(He has a high pain tolerance. He's afraid it won't be high enough.)

The glowing veins start spreading up his arm around when they crash. Everyone's distracted by that at first, but then Willow happens to glance at his arm and gasps.

"Hunter, your sigil!"

"It's fine," Hunter says, his voice slightly clipped as he tries to eek all the speed he can out of his staff. It's not fine - the burning is traveling up his arm along with the veins - but he can handle it. They need to get to the coven heads, to Luz, to the Emperor. They need to stop this, and they don't have time to deal with a bit of Hunter's pain.

Willow doesn't look like she entirely believes him, but she knows as well as Hunter does that they don't have time to waste, so she just leans over her own staff and flies a bit faster. "Tell us if it gets worse," she tells him firmly, and Hunter nods.

It's a lie. He won't say a word until he has to, and he doesn't have to yet.


They reach the coven heads. They reach the coven heads, and Darius doesn't respond when Hunter shakes him, and they're all just lying there, and they're dying-

They leave them. There's no time to deal with their pain either. They can't stop the spell from here. They have to stop it at the source; they have to stop the Emperor. Besides, Luz is in danger, she's in danger because she let Kikimora capture her instead of capturing Hunter, and the Emperor will not be merciful. Hunter knows the Emperor will not be merciful.

"You cannot have mercy on wild witches," he'd told Hunter, and Hunter had nodded, had thought about his slaughtered family (fake, fake, a lie-) and the burning ruins of a village where his uncle had found him (real, he thought, but still a lie; he hadn't been born, he'd been made, and he'd never lived there, but the Emperor had still let it burn) and promised never to show mercy. He hadn't, and he'd told himself it was for the best. Wild witches were dangerous, and if you showed mercy and let one live, then everyone else they hurt would be your fault.

His uncle told him that too. Hunter knows better now; wild witches were never the dangerous ones, the dangerous one was the Emperor, and Hunter had never seen enough to stop him. He let him live, he hadn't even known not to, and now everyone the Emperor has hurt is his fault.

He'll find a way to make up for that. Stopping the draining spell is a start, and he'll do it or die trying.

Willow shoots Hunter looks as they fly, her worried gaze fixed on the glowing veins that are creeping higher up his arm with every passing moment. Hunter understands her concern; they're flying into a fight, which means he needs to be battle-ready or he'll be useless. The civilians they saw at the ceremony certainly didn't look battle-ready, debilitated as they were by the pain of the draining spell, but Hunter isn't a civilian. Hunter is the Golden Guard, the youngest coven head and the youngest ever member of the Emperor's Coven, and the fact that his arm is burning a little (a lot) won't stop him.

Which is good, because as they reach the Head, it's clear that they're going to need every single one of them to have any hope of getting out of this alive.

Hunter has seen his uncle's cursed form before. (At least, his uncle told him it was a curse, the danger of wild magic, but now he wonders...) He bears some scars from it, so he knows firsthand how vicious it can be. But never has he seen it quite this angry. It's vicious, furious, and Hunter wonders what Luz did to trigger it. He wonders, for a moment, if there's any way to calm it, to turn it back into his uncle, to make things better again, before he remembers that won't make anything better at all.

(This form was always it, not he. It was his uncle's curse made flesh, it was the legacy of the wild witches who'd tried to kill him, it wasn't his uncle, not really. When the cursed form hurt him - and when it did, it always hurt him badly - it wasn't his uncle who had done it. It wasn't, Hunter always told himself, but now he wonders if his uncle ever really confirmed that, or if he just let Hunter think it because it was easier than explaining the truth.

It seems like there's a certain level of knowledge and strategy and cunning to the cursed form's movements now, and it's horribly, horribly familiar. Hunter doesn't think there's that much of a difference between this form and his uncle after all.)

Willow traps the Emperor in vines, and he growls, and the others are talking but Hunter can only watch, clutching his staff so tightly he knows his knuckles must be white under his gloves. Normally, when the curse is this bad, he'd offer his uncle a palisman, but Flapjack-

No, no, never again, never again.

The vines won't hold the Emperor forever, Hunter knows, and he can only watch as Willow and Luz and Amity all try to keep him down. He does his best to protect Willow from falling debris, spinning it away with his staff, but it's all he can bring himself to do; he can't bring himself to fight. He should, he knows he should, but-

The only good thing is that the adrenaline is dulling the pain from the draining spell. He can't use his right arm much, but it doesn't hurt quite as badly. The dull pain in spreading further, though, and Hunter doesn't want to think about what it'll do once it reaches his heart.

Gus tries some sort of illusion spell, but it seems to stun him as much as the Emperor, if not more; Hunter teleports in and out with him quickly to pull him out of the way. It's awkward to do one-handed, but he manages.

The curse creeps up to his neck. He ignores it.

Unfortunately, his movement seems to have finally caught the Emperor's attention, and it lunges forward. Hunter knows this, he knows what to expect, he clutches Flapjack and hopes it won't hurt too much-

"Hunter, why are you hurting me?" his uncle asks, and the face before him is his uncle's; shadowed and disheveled, but his uncle, not the curse. "I only wanted to help you," he continues, his voice desperate, and Hunter wants to believe him, he wants to, he wants to-

But he's seen the depths of the Emperor's mind, he knows what the Day of Unity means, he has a draining spell burning through his veins, he knows he was only created to be a tool that could easily be destroyed-

"You're- You're lying!" he protests, cringing backwards, already preparing for the pain because talking back never ends well-

The Emperor lets out a guttural yell - "kill him," Hunter thinks he said, although it also sounded a bit like "Caleb," strangely enough - and morphs back into his cursed form, rearing up and screaming. Hunter is frozen next to Gus, and the draining spell has reached his head and it burns, and then a whip of purple Abomination goo wraps around the Emperor's neck and yanks him backwards. The Emperor turns around, screeching again, and Hunter gathers enough wits to grab Gus and teleport away again, over to Willow. Teleporting feels harder, slower, like he's moving through thick mud instead of air. He wonders if it's a side effect of the draining spell; he doesn't have his own magic to drain, but perhaps it's making it harder for him to channel magic through the staff. Or it could just be that it's hard to focus; the pain is in his head now, like lightning in his brain, and it's getting hard to think.

He hears Luz scream for Amity, hears the sound of a thump, knows he should help- But his arm hurts, and the veins are spreading across his head, and his legs give out and he can't quite get them under him again.

"Hunter," Willow gasps, kneeling next to him like he's even remotely a priority right now. He can't gather enough breath to tell her to ignore him, though. Gus is at his other side, still clearly shaken by whatever happened with the illusion spell he tried to cast. Luz and Amity make their way over to them, and this is a last stand, Hunter can feel it. They're done. The Emperor's arm is a scythe and it's coming down on them and Willow is curling around Hunter and they're going to die-

They don't die.

There's a child in front of them, a child who's caught the Emperor's scythe and is holding it away from them like it's nothing. "Whatcha playing?" he asks, and it's so incongruous, so absolutely impossible, that for a moment, Hunter thinks either he's dead or the draining spell is causing him to hallucinate.

The Emperor calls the child the Collector. Hunter remembers that awful memory in the Emperor's mind, with the voice that emanated from the very walls. He remembers the childish glee at the thought of mayhem and destruction.

If this is the Collector, he's not sure their situation is really any better than it was before.

And then, suddenly, the Collector taps the Emperor on the forehead - just taps him, just taps him - and the Emperor goes flying. Hits the wall. Explodes. Drips onto the floor.

Hunter clamps a hand over his mouth, because if he doesn't, he's going to scream.

(At least he hardly feels the pain of the draining spell anymore, not when the whole world has gone dull and fuzzy and white.)

The Collector turns to them, clearly threatening, and Hunter snaps back into his body immediately. He knows why his mind does it, it's so he can protect himself, but it's a bad idea, because it brings the pain of the draining spell back to the forefront of his mind. He's only half paying attention as King appears in front of them and says something about the Owl House - is he bringing the Collector to the Owl Lady? - and a game. The others all pipe in, but when it's Hunter's turn, all he can do it turn his grimace into something vaguely more like a smile.

The Collector steps forward, and Willow and Gus both grab Hunter to drag him out of the way. He's grateful for it; he doesn't think he'd be able to move himself. He forces himself to focus on the Collector as he peers out the window, then holds out a hand and-

He moves the moon.

He moves the moon.

The spell is tied to the eclipse, so without an eclipse, there's no spell either. The pain lessens to a dull throbbing, and the glowing veins on Hunter's arm fade. He can stand on his own, even if he still feels a bit wobbly. He's felt worse. He'll manage.

"If we're gonna play Owl House," the Collector suddenly says, "we're gonna need an Owl House!"

And suddenly, he's floating, and he claps his hands together, and the palace starts to fall to pieces. The chunks of rock float, twirling in circles, and the bridge begins to break-

(Don't think about how long this was your home, don't think about it, don't think about it-)

"I think there's a way out," Willow says, pointing behind them, and Hunter immediately turns to run. He vaguely hears Amity begging Luz behind them, but he can't focus on there, he needs to get out, he needs to get to the room, he needs to-

What's left of his uncle is splattered across the wall and floor.

He can't. He can't. He can't step forward, can't step on this, can't walk through the archway where his uncle died, where his uncle still drips. "Hunter!" Gus begs, reaching for him, and he can't, he can't-

He has to.

He squeezes his eyes and runs forward. He thinks he feels something drip on him. He doesn't look.

The door clearly isn't stable, but it's their only hope of getting out of here alive. Hunter doesn't really know what's waiting for them on the other side, but he can't think that far ahead, not now. He just needs to get through, just needs to survive, just needs to make sure the others make it too. That's all he can focus on right now.

He reaches out and opens the door.

(He really, really hopes this isn't a huge mistake. He doesn't have another choice.)