The warehouse had gone still. Outside, rain ticked gently against the broken glass in the upper rafters, and the city's noise had pulled back like a tide. Only the lowest, steadiest sound remained — that soft hum in the earth that had started the moment Ilia brought the fragment back.
She found Vex on the roof, sitting cross-legged on a rusted pipe, his coat flared around him like a shadow. He didn't look back when she joined him.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Ilia sat beside him, knees pulled close, chin resting on them. The city stretched below like a cracked mirror. A place they both knew, but never quite trusted.
"She died, didn't she?" she said at last. "Myel."
Vex nodded slowly. "She burned."
Ilia closed her eyes.
"She sealed him herself," he added. "No one else could. Not after what he became."
Ilia's voice came barely above a whisper. "Do you remember her?"
He was quiet for a long time. Then:
"I trained her."
Ilia turned sharply. "You—what?"
He looked older in the moonlight. Worn.
"She didn't call me Vex, back then. She called me Arel. I was her… handler, I suppose. Guardian. Spy. Brother, when she let me be."
Ilia stared. "You're—?"
"No," he cut in. "Not the same. I'm not him. I just… remember pieces. Like dreams I woke up bleeding from."
She swallowed. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I wasn't sure until I saw you touch the cube. And because I hoped, foolishly, that maybe this time it would all stay buried."
Ilia looked away. "It never stays buried."
"No," he agreed. "Not with people like us."
She took the fragment from around her neck and placed it between them. It looked inert. Harmless. Like a paperweight.
"I'm scared," she said.
"I know."
"I don't know who I am anymore."
"You don't have to."
He looked at her then — fully, steadily.
"You just have to choose who to be next."
Ilia turned to face him, the space between them filled with everything they weren't saying. The weight of past selves. The possibility of tomorrow.
"Will you stop me," she asked, "if I become her?"
Vex didn't flinch. "I will."
"And if I become something worse?"
He hesitated. Then, softly: "Then I won't be the only one trying."
Ilia leaned back on her elbows, staring up at the sky.
"No stars tonight."
"Doesn't mean they're gone."
"Just hidden."
Vex nodded.
"Like the truth."