When Ilia opened her eyes, the sky was the wrong color.
It was still Calligro — the streets were the same, the towers in the distance carried the same shape. But everything was… shifted. Slightly tilted, like a painting hung just askew.
The air smelled like burnt mint and metal. Bells rang in reverse.
Vex was kneeling beside her, breathing hard, sweat trailing down his temple.
"Ilia," he said. "You with me?"
She nodded.
"Where's—"
"Rien's alive. He's searching the west stair. But the door…"
Ilia sat up slowly. Her limbs felt like liquid. Time hung around her skin like static.
"The boy," she whispered.
Vex nodded. "Gone. Slipped past us the moment it opened. Walked out like he owned the place."
"He does," she said. "He was born in that place. Raised in what I left behind."
Her voice broke.
"I didn't mean to leave him. I didn't even know he existed."
"Ilia…" Vex hesitated. "He called you Myel."
"He called me his."
They sat in silence for a long time.
Around them, the city buzzed with low, wrong energy.
A clock tower rang twelve — then eleven — then twelve again.
Reality was bleeding.
Footsteps.
Rien emerged from the shadow of a warped archway, panting.
"He's already changing things," he said. "Half the street names are missing. And the market square? It's now a lake. No one remembers it was ever different."
Ilia's hand drifted to her throat. The cube was gone, but something remained inside her — a hum beneath her ribs.
"He's rewriting," she murmured. "Not violently. Subtly. He's adjusting the world around his memory of it."
"Which means," Rien said, "he remembers a version of Calligro that isn't ours."
Vex stood. "We need to find him."
"How?" Ilia asked. "He could be anywhere. Anywhen."
Rien handed her something: a coin. One she'd never seen before — square, etched with a seal she couldn't read. It was warm.
"He left this," Rien said. "Pressed into the palm of a sleeping vendor. Said to give it to the girl who dreams of burning stars."
Ilia stared at the coin.
At the edge of her hearing, something whispered.
"Come find me, Myel. You owe me more than silence."