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Taly broke the surface with a sharp gasp, cool air cutting through the burn in her lungs. Behind her, Skye emerged in a burst of water.

They swam for the boardwalk. Sarina crouched low, flames curling around her hands as she reached for them.

Taly grabbed hold. The heat wrapped around her instantly, pulling the cold from her skin as water hissed and steamed off her clothes. She slumped onto the damp wood, chest heaving.

Skye was muttering something about reckless time mages while Sarina turned her attention to him, tutting and clucking like a mother hen.

Taly panted into the wood. She didn’t trust herself to rise.

They were close—she could hear them—but their voices felt distant, warped by the rush of blood in her ears.

Her breath came faster, short and shallow. Her head swam.

No air.

Her chest tightened, ribs locked.

Breathe.

But she couldn’t.

The statue—time and water had softened its features, but not enough to erase them. It was the same sharp angles. The same awesome, unrelenting—

“Taly?”

Skye’s voice cut through the haze of rising panic. She barely registered the sound of Sarina protesting behind him, or the quiet hiss of flames retreating as he shrugged her off.

He crouched beside her, his brows drawn tight. His gaze swept over her face, reading every twitch, every tremble.

“Talk to me.” He spoke softly, like calm was something he could lend her, if he just kept his voice even enough. “What’s going on?”

Taly shook her head, damp strands of hair whipping across her cheeks.

Nothing that was possible. Nothing that she—

A creak echoed over the water.

Taly turned, staring down the length of the boardwalk.

“Taly?” he said again.

But her gaze was fixed where the shadows pooled.

Skye followed the line of her vision. He stiffened.

She had to swallow to get the words out. “Do you see it too?”

A silhouette against the black, it was wrong in every way. Emaciated and frail, its form hunched as if the weight of its own existence was too much to bear.

And yet, the face—it wasn’t whole. Chunks of it were missing, eaten away like the stone of the statue.

But the eyes… they hadn’t changed.

Gold. Sharp. Unrelenting.

The monster who killed the grimble—it was here.

A slow tilt of the head. Hair, no longer straight and flaxen, fell across a bony shoulder in a ragged, tangled mat.