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The film of reality cracked.

Taly saw it from across the room, like an invisible pane of glass splintering and then dissolving back into empty space.

Except now there was a man standing behind Skye.

He wasn’t a shade. He bore no signs of revival—no ritual scarring, no crystal burn at the sternum. Yet he had been dead when they left him in the alley, barely minutes ago, and now here he stood, like death had been an inconvenience someone had quietly removed.

Skye’s breath caught. His face went white with pain. Instinct and years of training moved the dagger from his belt into his hand in an instant, flipping and stabbing back twice—

Two dull thuds as the blade struck flesh, but the man didn’t flinch.

Indeed, he never stopped smiling as he leaned around Skye to peer at the woman dead on the floor.

“This is why I hate fast fashion.” The voice was different, but the rhythm and cadence of his speech, the old-world accent, left no room for doubt. “One trip through the wash, and suddenly you’re coming apart at the seams.”

The man’s eyes, still black with infection, lifted to hers, and Taly saw him there—she saw Bill .

Skye clawed at the hand on his shoulder. The grip looked loose, barely resting against him, but he couldn’t dislodge it. The color continued draining from his face. He staggered, but the dead man’s hand seemed fused to his shoulder, an immovable weight.

With each passing second, his knees buckled lower. His breath shortened. Something was wrong. That touch wasn’t just holding him—it was taking .

She was done waiting. The meatshield had done his best. Now it was the firepower’s turn.

Snarling, Taly reached for her power. And as time ground to a halt inside the shop, she lunged.

There was no movement, no sound save for the click of her heels and her own ragged breath. Skye’s face was a mask of pain, frozen in a single moment of breathless agony. Bill’s cruel smile had become fixed.

Through a slit in her skirts, she found the dagger sheathed to her thigh and aimed right for that fucking smile as she wrenched back the blade.

Then the corpse turned his head—only his head.

Time was still frozen. It shouldn’t have been possible—to ignore her magic. All things real and material were bound by time, nothing —

Reality cracked.

She saw it a moment too late, fractures forming in the air before her—too fast for her to stop, to twist out of the way, to even grunt in shock before a wave of cold swept over her, pricking against her skin like a million tiny shards of glass.

Skye and the man vanished.

It was only a split second of darkness, but as her dagger came down to complete its swing, she felt the solid thud of stone as her body went hurtling straight into a wall.

Sound came crashing in as time restarted.

Shelves splintered, tins and boxes of old junk and scrap raining down. The dagger stuck, and Taly held fast, using it to keep herself upright as bits of metal and glass ripped her dress and sliced open her skin.

She blinked. Then whipped her head around to where Skye and the man still stood behind the counter.

They were over there now, yet somehow she was… over here?

All the way across the room.

She hadn’t phased, so… how?

The man laughed. “Sun and Moon, Time and Shadow… but I’ll admit, this part of the story is always fun. For me, at least.”

Then Aneirin’s grip tightened, fingers digging into flesh. Skye gritted his teeth as pain blazed down the bond so hard and fast that Taly’s entire world tilted with the impact.

Just a fraction of what Skye was feeling, but she gasped, clawing at the nearest solid object for balance.

Suddenly there was no air in the room. She could feel the warmth draining out of her body, feel her cells dying as a chill colder than death swept through her.

It tingled and cracked in her veins. Made her blood burn like solid ice.

Her legs gave way, and her back hit the wall as her body slumped—

Then it stopped. Like a switch had been flipped, the agony cut off.

Taly managed to suck in a breath.

On the other side of the shop, she found Skye watching her, eyes wild with pain. He’d shut the door between their minds—shut himself on the other side where he was still drowning.

The corpse chuckled softly. “Well, look at that. You’ve got some substance to you, boy. No wonder Tenebros has been salivating.” Skye choked, and Taly cried out. “You’ll forgive me if I enjoy this. I always did like breaking his toys.”

The corpse’s skin stretched taut around his knuckles as his thumb dug in deeper. Skye tried to stifle a groan, only half-succeeding.

“Shh, don’t fight it,” Aneirin crooned. “Just let go and embrace the inevitable.”

The air thickened as a stagnant wave of magic rippled through the room. Taly didn’t know what kind, only that it made her skin crawl and the firelamps sputter, the crystals inside dimming as if the power had cut out.

Skye gave a strangled cry. And then slowly, painfully, dropped to one knee.

There was no injury that she could see, no blood. But his lips were taking on a bluish cast, and the bond was stretching thin. That spot in the back of her head that now belonged to him was getting so unbearably cold, and he was shaking, trying to fight it but shaking so horribly—

The other knee gave way as a second wave of that horrible magic rolled through the shop. Taly braced herself against it—against the cold, the sheer wrongness of it—her teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached.

Calm as ever, Aneirin stooped and pried the box from Skye’s nerveless fingers.

One more steady push was all it took to force him to the ground.

Aneirin lurched back a step, the movement clumsy—as if the corpse was stiffening.

“This story doesn’t have to end the same, time mage.

Just because a thing is doesn’t mean that it always was or has to be.

” The shop bell jangled as he opened the door, saying over his shoulder, “Consider my offer. The clock is ticking, and it’s more than she’ll ever give you, no matter her promises. ”

Then he was gone.

And with him, that stagnant cloud of magic that had sucked every drop of aether from the air lifted as the firelamps flickered back on.

Taly tasted bile. Grasping the wall of broken shelves behind her, she clawed her way back to her feet.

She could hear murmuring outside the shop. Footsteps shuffling.

Skye panted through the pain, still on the ground. One hand gripped his shoulder like there was a wound, but he jerked his chin.

“Go,” he rasped. “I’ll catch up.”

Taly wobbled through another step. Her fingers and toes were tingling and numb but quickly regaining feeling as she retrieved her dagger from the wall. “What happened to ‘get behind me, no arguing?’ ”

Skye attempted a smile. He already had more color. “Move your ass, time mage.”

Taly grinned. It felt good—that belief in her. And something inside her rose to meet it.

She pinched the air above her head. A swift jerk, like she was pulling down a hood, and her dress and cloak were suddenly gone, replaced by dark leggings, sturdy boots, and a black leather coat cinched at the waist with a red silk sash. Her hair was a simple braid.

Skye arched a brow. She shrugged and said, “I got dressed twice today,” as she strode for the door.

“Promise you’ll be careful,” Skye called after her.

The shop bell jangled as Taly wrenched open the door.

“Taly, I mean it—say the words back to me.”

She drew her pistol in one smooth motion, her fingers tightening around the grip. “I’m offended at the lack of trust here.”

“ Taly .”

“Okay, fine,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll be careful.”

Skye breathed a sigh. “Thank you.”

“Within reason. And at my discretion.”

“Wait, Taly, that’s not—”

But the door swung closed as she dashed into the alley.

“ Of all the indignities… ”

Taly’s head whipped towards the sound.

“ Why did it have to be a corpse? ” A crash sounded from farther down the alley. “ Ew. Gross. Ew . This is so unsanitary .”

Aneirin was a stooped shadow hobbling towards the mouth of the alley, cursing under his breath.

“ Shit. Fuck. Ew .”

She moved toward him, raising her pistol.

She couldn’t get close enough to let him touch her—not after seeing what happened to Skye. And magic clearly wouldn’t work either. Spells just seemed to slough right off him.

Bullets, however—bullets were always reliable.

The gunshot erupted through the alley.

Farther down, Aneirin stumbled into the wall. “ What the fuck?! You shot me in the ass!” He was indeed gripping his ass as he started hobbling away. “Who the hell does that?”

Taly took aim a second time. Fired.

The borrowed body lurched. “You realize this vessel is dead, right? I can’t feel pai—”

She fired again.

“That one… Seven realms of bloody hell, you know where that one went, you fucking sadist!”

Again.

“This is starting to feel malicious!”

Again.

Aneirin collapsed to his knees. “Shit.” Black blood leaked from his mouth, from his wounds, streaking the cobbles as he used one hand to pull his body forward. The other still clasped the box. Metal scraped against stone as it dragged.

Taly followed at a careful distance, keeping her pistol trained in front of her.

“Gods, it’s Cacus all over again,” Aneirin muttered. She shot him in the heart, the head. Bone and blood splattered, but he kept crawling. “This is why I hate using the dead... You get one good jump before some trigger-happy throk’khar decides to shoot you a new hole to piss from.”

Just then, clipped, heeled footsteps sounded from down the street.

“Finally,” Aneirin growled. That strange, stagnant power once more began charging the air. Taly felt it like the icy cold finger of death scraping down her spine. “Catching a cab this time of night is always so hit or miss.”

And then Aneirin heaved himself back to his feet, stumbling wildly the final few steps to the mouth of the alley, where he collapsed against a young, Shardless woman with a round face and curly hair as she walked past. She gave a cry that quickly cut off.