As Saffie panted, trying to catch her breath, she saw Nate’s dagger fall from the spot where it had been lodged in the growlem’s gemstone and impale itself upright in the grass.

Nate staggered over to it and yanked it out, and Saffie’s eyes immediately locked on the scroll.

Nate was distracted. This was her chance.

Without hesitation, Saffie kicked herself into a wild sprint and dived at the tree stump. She snatched the scroll in mid-air and tumbled across the grass, coming to an awkward stop with her legs in the air but the scroll clutched safely to her chest.

Nate blinked at her.

“That was kind of unnecessary,” he said.

“It’s important,” Saffie defended herself, spitting out a blade of grass and getting to her feet.

Making sure that she was at an angle in which Nate couldn’t see its contents, Saffie peeled open the scroll, feeling butterflies in her stomach. But when it was fully open, she just stared at the worn parchment.

It was blank.

“Was it worth it?” Nate asked.

“There’s nothing written here,” Saffie said, flipping it from front to back. “This whole thing was a complete waste of time. What is this? It must be some kind of joke. The game is trolling me.”

“No,” said Nate, frowning. “There was definitely something written on it before that growlem appeared. I could see some of the letters bleeding through the paper when I went to grab it. Wait - letters… Oh no.”

“What?” said Saffie.

“That Erase spell you cast…”

“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying?”

Nate scrunched up his face.

“I erased the writing on the scroll?” Saffie gasped. “I was gonna cast a Wipe, and you told me to cast an Erase instead!”

“I’m… sorry.” said Nate. “I had no idea it would do that. A Wipe might have done the same.”

“No no no no no!” Saffie pleaded. “There has to be some way of restoring the text. Open spellbook!”

Saffie flicked the pages rapidly, looking for something that would reverse the Erase, but slammed it shut in frustration when she couldn’t find anything.

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She was furious. Nate had no idea how important this advantage was to her. She plonked her backside on the tree stump and sat there with her head in her hands.

“Come on,” said Nate. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“Not for you it isn’t,” Saffie retorted. “It is for me. And if you hadn’t tried stealing the scroll, I would have taken it and been out of here a long time before that growlem appeared.”

“Look, I didn’t know it was yours, alright?” Nate snapped. “And if it was a gift from your uncle, like you say, then I’m sure he’ll happily get you a new one.”

Saffie felt the rage rising. Nate had hit a nerve.

“No, my uncle won’t happily get me a new one. And you wanna know why? Because he’s in a coma! Someone cast a sleeping spell on him, and now he’s in hospital on life support because the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him. That scroll was probably my only chance at staying alive long enough in this game to find and perform the counter-spell to wake him up!”

This shut Nate up.

“I… had no idea,” he eventually said meekly. “I’m sorry. Is there… anything I can do to help?”

Saffie took a deep breath.

“Unless you know what ‘Give the Onyx to the Oracle’ means, then the only thing you can do to help is leave me alone.”

“Give the Onyx to the Oracle…” Nate mused. “What do you think the Onyx is?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be sat here with my head in my hands,” Saffie said miserably.

“And the Oracle? Who is that? An Oracle means someone who predicts the future-”

“Just go!” Saffie interjected. “Please. Just… go and enjoy your game.”

Nate sighed.

“I hope you’re able to help your uncle,” he said.

Saffie didn’t look up. She just sat there, fuming, listening to the grass crushing beneath Nate’s feet as he walked away slowly, and the flap of Talia’s wings as they left the clearing.

Through her fingers, Saffie saw Acorn trotting after them before stopping and glancing back at her sadly.

“Come on,” she called to Acorn as she shoved the now useless parchment into her pocket. “Let’s head home.”

At breakfast the following morning, Saffie sat at the kitchen table stirring her cereal in a daze. It had been more than 48 hours since Dax had collapsed, and it was really starting to sink in that he would be stuck in that state until she figured out a way to wake him up. After visiting him briefly in the evening and getting upset at the sight of his usually very animated body just lying there motionless, Saffie had barely slept through the night, spending most of it doing internet searches on her phone for anything related to Overworld, and getting more and more frustrated with every unrelated result. It was like the game didn’t exist. Either nobody was posting about it, which seemed very unlikely, or the developers were removing all traces of information about it - keeping it exclusive to those few who had found or been given a key.

Acorn, on the other hand, had slept like a little log, stretched out over Saffie’s stomach. Stroking his soft fur had been the only thing that had eventually calmed Saffie down enough to get some brief sleep before her alarm had woken her up at 7am.

As Saffie headed over to the kitchen bin to pour the remainder of her now thick and soggy mini Weetabix into it, she noticed her mum was fishing a pair of yellow gloves from the cupboard under the sink.

“Someone needs to clear out your uncle’s fridge before the food in there goes mouldy,” she said, and started rifling through her assortment of disinfectants. “Industrial Strength Air Freshener. That should get rid of his flat’s awful smell of old pizza.”

“I want to come with you,” Saffie blurted.

Holly looked her up and down.

“Very well, you can help me strip the bedsheets.”

Saffie nodded, but she couldn’t care less about Dax’s bedsheets. She needed answers about the Onyx and the Oracle, and Dax’s flat was as good a starting point as any in her hunt for them.

It was time to investigate.