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Chapter Text

She was gone.

  The words were simple, brutal, as final as the slow, clanging silence of an empty gauntlet falling onto blood-blackened stone.

  Caitlyn watched from the remnants of the old watchtower bridge, body propped against a splintered windowsill, wind tugging at the hem of her jacket like an impatient child. Her right eye, the one she still had, followed the line of mourners gathered below. Her other was hidden behind the new patch—sleek black leather, ill-fitting, a reminder stitched in skin.

  They had come with scraps of parchment, every one of them. Some had tied them with ribbon, others folded them like prayers, small enough to hide in a fist. In the center, a low fire burned, fed by broken wood and memory. Smoke curled up like incense in a cathedral of ghosts.

  From this height, they looked like shadows, worn silhouettes wrapped in soot and borrowed valor. Ekko’s head was bowed, his hand tight around a paper square. He lit it from the shared flame and let it go, and the wind stole it before it could finish curling. The name written on it was gone too fast to read. He stands too still, too quiet.

  He was wearing Vi’s jacket. Powder-blue fabric darkened by grime and battle, the collar torn, the shoulders too broad. It didn’t fit. It shouldn’t, but he wore it like a vow.

  Jinx was there too, shockingly, barefoot and still bleeding from her right forearm, eyes hollowed out like old fruit left too long in the sun. No weapons, no laughter. She didn’t hold a paper. She just stared into the fire like she was trying to drown in it.

  It was Vi who pulled her back. Again. Always. 

  Until it cost her everything.

  The fire grew. Ash and soot rode the wind, rising like the ghosts of the fallen. Their names were painted in flame, devoured before they could be remembered properly.

  Caitlyn fumbled in her lap. It was just a square of parchment, yellowing, edges soft from sweat and the pressure of her grip. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling. She hadn’t written it yet.

  Not the name. Not her name.

  Her fingers closed around the pencil, pale knuckles blooming bone-white. The lead bit into the paper, but her hand wouldn’t move. The shape of the V was trapped in her throat like a scream she never gave herself permission to make.

  The cane rested across her lap, her leg throbbing under the pressure of the bandages. Rain from earlier clung to her hair, soaked and sticking to her temple. She hadn’t eaten. She hadn’t slept.

  The bridge below flickered in gold and orange, a burning altar to the dead. One by one, people stepped forward and added names to the fire, until the entire horizon glowed like a furnace, a city mourning itself.

  Caitlyn tried again.

  The pencil scratched, just the start of a line, and then it snapped. She stared at the broken point and the splintered graphite dust on her glove. Her chest tightened. A raw, keening noise pushed up through her teeth, strangled by the sharp bite of grief she had held in for three long days.

  Then she was sobbing.

 Ugly, broken sounds, hitching through her chest like a backfiring engine. Her hand curled over the scrap of paper, crushing it against her heart. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to remember.

  But, worst of all, it hurt to imagine a world that goes on.

  The light from the bridge glowed brighter now. Not fire, but embers, floating up into the sky like little souls too light to stay. One floated near. Its paper sides were scorched, half-collapsing. Still, it rose.

Caitlyn watched it disappear into the dark. And, for a moment, all she could think is you said you would always come back.

  But the truth was heavier than flame, heavier than love, and heavier than the air in her lungs.

  She wouldn’t.

  Vi was gone.

  And no place would ever be home again.

Caitlyn almost shot her.

  She had been asleep, barely, shallow-breathed and dreamless, when the window creaked. Her hand moved on instinct, curling around the grip of the pistol beneath her pillow, the barrel already drawn and pointed before her mind had caught up. The moonlight fell in like a blade. It sliced across the old estate bedroom, her bedroom now, silvering the white sheets, the half-open closet door, the narrow glass of the vanity mirror.

  And there she was, perched on the windowsill like some grotesque painting of a girl. She had one boot hooked on the ledge and the other tapping against the wall. Her blue hair was wild, frizzed out from the wind, her goggles crooked above hollow eyes.

   Jinx.

  She grinned like a jackal caught in the middle of pretending to be a songbird. “Y’know," she said, voice too loud for the dead hour. “You really oughta lock your windows. I could’ve been a burglar, or a banshee, or a fucking ex.”

  The silence that followed dragged its feet across the room.

  Caitlyn didn’t lower the pistol. Her heart had jerked into her throat and now beat behind her teeth, too fast, too panicked. It was not the fear of dying. Death had become a shadow she lived beside. 

  It was her. Here.

  Jinx blinked, eyes flicking toward the gun. Her grin faltered. “Oh,” she said, tapping her knuckles against her head. “Right. The gun. Of course.” She spread her arms theatrically. “No bombs, I promise, just little ol’ me come to call on the grieving widow.”

  Caitlyn’s jaw tightened. Her grip slackened by a fraction, though the muzzle didn’t drop. Her voice rasped. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jinx looked around and rolled her eyes, sauntering a step into the room. She smelled like smoke and something chemical. Gunpowder, maybe, or whatever back-alley tonic kept her hands from shaking too much.

  “Thought I’d pop in,” she said. “Pay my respects. Say hey, you know. Normal family stuff.”

  She said it like it tasted bad. Like she had learned it phonetically and hated every syllable.

  “Is this a joke to you?” Caitlyn asked too softly. 

  The pistol trembled slightly in her hand. She hated that she couldn’t make it stop. Jinx shrugged, but the motion was less a shrug and more a nervous tic, shoulders twitching as if remembering a shock.

  “No,” she said. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m shit at this.”

  She dropped onto the edge of the writing desk like she belonged there, legs swinging over the side, and looked at Caitlyn with a too-open stare. 

  “You miss her,” Jinx said, and the way she said it so casually, like a weather report, nearly made Caitlyn scream.

  Caitlyn lowered the gun. She set it on the nightstand with trembling fingers, though her every instinct screamed not to. Jinx didn’t move. The silence returned, this time thicker.

  “I miss her too,” Jinx said, quieter now.

  Caitlyn flinched. That shouldn’t matter. That shouldn’t matter.

  “You killed her,” Caitlyn said. 

  It was not an accusation. It was just fact, spoken the way you would say the date, or the time.

  Jinx tilted her head. “Not with my hands.”

  “No. You let her go into that tower alone.”

  The words slapped between them like cold water. Jinx’s mouth opened, then closed again. Her hands curled into fists on her lap.

  “She told me to run,” she said. “Said it like a command. And I—fuck, I listened. First time I ever—” Her voice broke off with a sharp breath. She pushed a hand through her hair, tugging until the strands caught. “I thought she’d follow.”

  Caitlyn turned her face away, jaw clenched so tight it clicked.

  “She always followed,” Jinx muttered. “That was her thing, right? Always comes back. She said it, even, like a promise.”

  Caitlyn let out a bitter laugh. It sounded like coughing. “She lied,” she said.

  “No,” Jinx said, standing abruptly. Her shadow lurched with her, wild against the wallpaper. “No, she didn’t . She just—this time, she didn’t make it back. That’s not the same.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Another silence.

  Jinx walked to the window, half-turned, one boot on the sill again. She stared at the sky like it might rearrange itself into something more survivable.

  “I didn’t come to fight,” she said. “Didn’t come to cry either. Not good at either anymore.”

  Caitlyn rubbed the bridge of her nose. Her fingers brushed the edge of the eye patch and she winced. “Why did you come?” she asked finally.

  Jinx visibly hesitated. “You were the last person she loved.”

  Caitlyn looked at her, really looked, at the scorched hems of her coat, the cracked goggles, the chapped lips, the hollows where laughter used to live.

  “She loved you too,” Caitlyn said, voice dry as old paper. “In spite of everything.”

  Jinx gave a sharp, broken sound. Not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. “In spite of everything,” she echoed. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”

  The wind slipped in through the window, tugging the curtains like curious fingers. Jinx stepped onto the sill, preparing to leave.

  “Wait,” Caitlyn said.

  Jinx turned, a flicker of something—fear? hope?—flickering across her face.

  “If you ever come back,” Caitlyn said. “Knock. Use the front door.”

  Jinx blinked. Once, then twice. Then, a grin, smaller this time. Realer. Like maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t pretending.

  “Sure, Cupcake,” she said. “Whatever you say.”

  Then she was gone, swallowed by night and rooftops. Caitlyn didn’t move for a long time. The pistol sat cold on the nightstand. The curtains fluttered. In the drawer of the desk, the folded scrap of parchment still lay unfinished. A single initial, a shaky hand.

  She didn’t sleep the rest of the night, but she sat by the window until morning.

  Just in case.

The Manor had gone too quiet since the war ended.

  Caitlyn sat in the study, the room half-lit by morning that hadn’t decided yet whether to be cloudy or clear. Dust motes drifted in shafts of pale gold, and the scent of old ink and fireplace ash clung to everything, both familiar and suffocating. The walls were lined with books she hadn’t touched since girlhood, and the decanter on the side table had been full of the same amber liquor since before the Undercity started fighting back.

  The fire had long gone out.

  Across from her, slouched in a leather armchair too fine for someone with blood under her nails, Sevika smoked.

  It was a thick, acrid scent, the kind that would cling to drapes and lungs alike. Her mechanical arm rested against the chair’s armrest, fingers flexing slightly as if bored, or calculating. Her organic hand held the cigar.

  “I still don’t get why you asked me here,” she said, voice rough as gravel dragged down a throat.

  Caitlyn leaned forward. She had been nursing a cup of too-cold tea for nearly an hour. Her cane rested against the desk beside her. “I want you to take my seat on the Council.”

  The words landed like a dropped weapon. 

  Sevika stared. She blinked once, then huffed a laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “Sure. And maybe next you’ll want me to marry a Piltie merchant and pose for family portraits. What the fuck, Kiramman?”

  Caitlyn didn’t flinch. “You’re respected in Zaun,” she said evenly. “Feared, yes. But you understand the Undercity. You know what it’s cost. What it needs. ”

  Sevika gestured vaguely with the cigar, ash flaking onto the rug. “You think that makes me a politician?”

  “I think it makes you a survivor,” Caitlyn said. “And the Council is full of people who’ve never had to survive a damn thing.”

  Sevika snorted. “And you? You’re just giving up your pretty chair and title out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “I’m not giving it up,” Caitlyn said. “I’m choosing the person I want to speak in my place.”

  Sevika’s expression darkened. “You want to use me.”

  Caitlyn’s mouth twisted, the closest thing to a smile she could manage these days. “Everyone on that Council is using someone. I’d rather it be someone who’s bled in the streets than someone who’s only ever bled on paper.”

  The room went still. The only sound was the faint pop of the cigar’s ember. Sevika watched her. Something unspoken passed behind those half-lidded eyes, tired and calculating all at once.

  “Why me?” she asked. “There are others. People who give speeches, people who care .”

  Caitlyn looked down at the rim of her cup. Tea leaves curled along the bottom like bruises. Her throat worked around words she hadn’t said out loud in weeks.

  “Because you knew Vi.”

  The quiet that followed was colder than any silence before it.

  Caitlyn didn’t look up. “She would’ve hated the Council,” she said softly. “Would’ve kicked down the doors before she asked to speak. But… she knew what mattered. People, not titles.”

  Sevika didn’t speak for a long time. When Caitlyn finally lifted her gaze, the older woman’s expression had shifted. It was less combative, and more worn.

  “She was a pain in the ass,” Sevika said, voice almost gentle. “Always charging ahead, always dragging trouble behind her like it was a damned cape.”

  Caitlyn’s lip twitched.

  “She was a good fighter,” Sevika added, and this time her voice had a note of respect buried beneath the smoke. “Took hits like they didn’t matter and hit back harder. She cared, which is more than I can say for most people that high up.”

  Caitlyn nodded. Her hands were clenched too tight around the cup, knuckles pale. “She believed Zaun deserved better.”

  Sevika stood slowly, the old armchair creaking beneath the shift of weight. She tapped the end of the cigar on the edge of the ashtray, then stubbed it out. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  Caitlyn didn’t push. She just inclined her head once.

  As Sevika walked toward the door, she paused in the threshold. “For what it’s worth,” she said. “She would’ve been proud that you’re not just sitting in a hole with your grief. You’re trying to do something.”

  Caitlyn swallowed around the sudden sting in her throat. “Thank you.”

  Sevika shrugged, already halfway out the door. “Don’t thank me yet,” she muttered. “I might still say no.”

  The door clicked shut behind her.

  Caitlyn sat in the silence again. The dust, the cold, the books full of names of men who never bled. But something was different, just slightly. A shift in pressure, in the air.

  A start, just maybe.

  And for the first time in days, she poured herself a new cup of tea.

The envelope was already stained when she found it.

  Rain had crept in through the cracked study window overnight, soaking the sill and the edge of her correspondence tray. The rest of the letters had warped and curled like dead leaves in autumn, but this one, thicker and sealed in matte black, had held.

  There was no name on the front. No sigil, no wax, not even an address. Caitlyn reached for it with her left hand, the tremor in her dominant still not fully gone. The cane leaned against her chair as she slit the envelope open with a paper knife.

  Inside was one slip of thick, cream-colored card. It was unlined with no signature. Inside were just four words.

  Fine. I'll do it.

  Caitlyn stared at them for a long moment, unsure whether to laugh or weep.

  The penmanship was surprisingly neat, precise, squared-off block letters like a woman trying not to reveal how often she wrote at all. There were no flourishes, no sentiment, not even her name.

  And, still, it felt more genuine than half the Council’s official decrees.

  Caitlyn stood slowly, pain singing down her healing leg, and crossed to the hearth where a small fire flickered low. She knelt carefully, and held the card just close enough to feel the warmth without setting it alight.

  She wasn’t going to burn it.

  She wanted to remember this moment, quiet and weightless, significant in a way explosions never could be. Behind her, the Manor creaked. Above her, the portrait of her mother stared down with unspoken judgment, caught forever in brushstroke finery and the expectation of legacy. But this would be Caitlyn’s legacy now. Not inherited, but built. Not pristine, but earned.

  Sevika would take the Kiramman seat. Zaun would finally have a voice that the Council couldn’t ignore. And somewhere, whether in the soil or the sky, Vi was laughing .

  Caitlyn pressed her lips together, folded the note carefully, and tucked it into the small drawer of the desk where she kept things she couldn’t part with, like a bullet casing, a snapped pencil, and a scrap of parchment with a trembling, unfinished V.

  Her hand rested over the drawer for a moment, steadier now. Then she sat back down and began to write the first agenda for the new Council meeting. At the top of the list, in bold ink, she penned representation for the Undercity.

  It had begun.

She had not been to the Undercity in weeks, not since the memorial fires burned low and the scent of blood was still sour in the back of her throat.

  It pulsed around her like an old wound still trying to close. The lift creaked with rust as it carried her down into the belly of what used to be enemy territory, though Caitlyn knew better now. Nothing was ever that clean.

  Vi had known. Always.

  The Firelights, what was left of them, had made a home beneath the bones of the great tree. Scrap metal welded into balconies, rope bridges stretched like veins between buildings, and lights glimmered in jars above makeshift walkways. Laughter echoed faintly in places where bombs once fell.

  They were building. Somehow, still building.

  She found Ekko in the workshop. He was bent over a table littered with gears and glinting metal shards, goggles pulled down over his eyes, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt. His hands were steady. There were scars now on his arms that Caitlyn didn’t remember. 

  He didn’t look up when she stepped in. “Knew you were coming,” he said, not quite smiling. “Jinx told me.”

  Caitlyn blinked. “Jinx talks to you now?”

  Ekko shrugged. “Not in words.” He gestured vaguely. “But she’s around.”

  He set the tool down, wiped his hands, and finally looked at her. His face had hardened since the battle. Not cruel, just older. “What do you need, Commander?”

  The word was a jab. It was light, but pointed.

  She sighed. “I’m not Commander Kiramman anymore.”

  He raised a brow. “Still dressed like one.”

  Caitlyn glanced down at her pressed trousers, clean jacket, and boots scrubbed free of Zaunite grime. She looked out of place, she knew it, but old habits didn’t die as easily as the people who shaped them.

  She crossed her arms. “I came because I wanted to talk, not debate, and not negotiate.”

  Ekko’s gaze sharpened. “Talk about what?”

  “Vi.”

  That landed like a fist to the ribs. Ekko looked away. His jaw clenched, fingers twitching once on the table edge. He didn’t speak.

  Caitlyn stepped further in. “She loved you,” She said softly. “I don’t think she ever said it, not the way you deserved, but she did.”

  Ekko made a low noise. It was not quite a scoff. Not quite anything, really.

  “She was the first person who ever gave a damn if I lived or died,” he said. “She taught me to throw a punch and patch a bike and climb without looking down.” He looked at Caitlyn now, eyes rimmed red, not from crying, but from not sleeping. “She left,” he said, voice hoarse. “And when she came back, she didn’t belong here anymore. She didn’t belong there, either. She just… wandered between.”

  Caitlyn’s throat tightened. “She was always between.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But she kept trying anyway.”

  They sat in the quiet for a while. Somewhere far above, a siren echoed and then faded.

  “She wanted us to work together,” Caitlyn said eventually. “Before the end. She said it like a joke, but… it wasn’t.”

  Ekko let out a long breath and rested his weight against the edge of the table. “People up top still hate us,” he said. “They think we’re thieves, terrorists. Barely people.”

  “I know.”

  “And most of my people hate yours right back.”

  “I know that, too.”

  Ekko’s gaze met hers again. There was fire there, but also something bruised. “So what do you want, Caitlyn? A truce? A treaty?”

  “I want a future,” she said. “One that Vi would’ve wanted. One that doesn’t keep bleeding itself dry.”

  Ekko was quiet again, but it wasn’t resistance. It was something harder to name.

  “I see her in you,” Caitlyn said, barely above a whisper. “When you’re angry. When you don’t back down. When you look at the world like it should’ve been fairer.”

  Ekko didn’t speak.

  “She believed in you,” Caitlyn went on. “She told me once that you’d build what she never could. A better Zaun, one worth bleeding for.”

  His hands clenched. “She said that?”

  Caitlyn nodded.

  “She was wrong about a lot,” Ekko said slowly. “But not that.”

  They stood across from each other like opposing pieces on a board neither wanted to play. But the air had shifted, just slightly. The tension not gone, but softened.

  “I’ll meet with your Council,” Ekko said. “But not in Piltover. You come here.”

  “Agreed.”

  He turned back to the worktable, picked up a gear, and rolled it between his fingers. “You bring Sevika too,” he added. “If she’s going to speak for us, she needs to hear us.”

  “She will,” Caitlyn said. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  She turned to go, but paused in the doorway. “She missed you,” she said, not turning around. “Right until the end.”

  Ekko didn’t answer.

  But when she looked back, he was holding the gear too tightly, his knuckles white and eyes shut, and, for a moment, she didn’t see the boy in the mask or the man with the scar.

  She saw the brother. The one who had lost her too.

The ink had started to blur on the page.

  Caitlyn blinked hard, but the words didn’t stop swimming. Her hand trembled slightly as she lifted the quill from the parchment, a blot blooming black across the margin.

  Her left eye ached, dull and persistent, the kind of fatigue that settled behind the socket like a nesting bird. She closed it for a moment and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, sighing through her teeth.

  She was still learning how to see with half the world. Depth was unreliable. Angles betrayed her. Light could be cruel. But the worst part was how empty the other side felt. Not dark, but absent, a missing limb that no one else could see.

  The clock chimed two.

  She stood, joints stiff, back aching, and stretched until the vertebrae popped in protest. She no longer needed the cane, though her muscles still remembered the shape of the limp. Some habits lingered longer than pain. It was silent when she left her study. She padded down the hallway in soft slippers, intent on tea or sleep, whichever would come first.

  But she stopped short halfway down the corridor. There was someone standing in front of the portrait.

  Her father.

  He was still in his formal waistcoat, collar unbuttoned at the throat, hair mussed from sleep, or the lack of it. He stood stock-still before the towering painting of Cassandra Kiramman, one hand tucked behind his back, the other loose at his side. The oil paint had begun to fade at the edges, but her mother remained as poised as ever. blue eyes stern and her mouth unreadable, like a ghost in brushstrokes.

  Caitlyn hovered, unsure if she should speak. But her father turned before she could decide. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked softly.

  “Neither could you,” she said.

  He chuckled once, a brittle sound. “I’ve been trying to remember how old she was in this. Forty-two, I think. Right before the Zaun negotiations. You were ten.”

  Caitlyn stepped forward, her arms crossing against her chest. “She hated that dress.”

  His brows rose. “Did she?”

  “She said it made her look like a chandelier. I think she only wore it because the Minister’s wife had the same one in green.”

  He smiled faintly, eyes still on the painting. “She was always playing a game I never fully understood.”

  Caitlyn didn’t answer.

  Tobias turned to her then. And for a moment, he looked like a man trying to solve a riddle written in a language only ghosts spoke. His eyes moved slowly, landing at last on the patch covering the right side of her face. He reached out, hesitated, and then, gently, his fingertips brushed the edge of the leather.

  “I’m so grateful you lived,” he said. His voice cracked on the last word. “You don’t… I don’t think I could’ve done it again.”

  Caitlyn felt her breath catch in her chest.

  She hadn’t heard that tone in his voice since that day months ago, since the day her mother was taken from them with no warning, no final word, no promise. And now here he was, worn down to the truth.

  He let his hand fall away, guilt flickering across his face like a shadow. “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I forget it’s not there,” she said. “But I’m getting used to it.”

  He nodded. “You’re stronger than I ever was.”

“No,” she said. “Just different.”

  A pause. Then, quietly, carefully, he stepped closer and gathered her into his arms. The hug was stiff at first. Both of them were uncertain. Then it deepened, arms tight and fingers curled in fabric, breath caught in throats.

  Caitlyn hadn’t been held like this since the funeral.  Not Vi’s, nor her mother’s. The first one. The first loss that taught her how little control they had over time.

  “I miss her,” he whispered.

  “So do I.”

  “She would have been proud of you.”

  “I hope so.”

  When they pulled apart, there was wetness at the corners of his eyes, and Caitlyn’s throat ached from holding too much inside. He looked at her one more time, really looked, and nodded to himself. It was approval, not dismissal. Just… acceptance.

  “Come to the garden tomorrow,” he said. “The spring crocus has started to bloom.”

  Caitlyn nodded. “I will.”

  He walked away with the slow grace of a man no longer pretending not to grieve. And Caitlyn stayed a while longer, staring up at her mother’s portrait. 

  When she finally turned away, she didn’t feel lighter. But she felt seen. And, for tonight, that was enough.

Time passed, not like a river, but like molasses: slow, heavy, inevitable.

  Caitlyn measured it in ink blots and rifle shells. In the way her father’s shoulders had begun to loosen during their afternoon walks. In the way the bruises under Ekko’s eyes faded. In the absence of fresh blood on Sevika’s knuckles when she showed up for meetings.

  The city hadn’t healed. Cities didn’t heal. They just grew scar tissue. But Piltover and Zaun had started to breathe together again, unevenly, a little ragged, but alive.

  It was Ekko who brought maps now, rolled under his arm, tagged with handwritten notes, corners stained with coffee. Caitlyn would spread them across the study table and lean in beside him, her one good eye tracking his scrawl, catching the places where she could fill in blanks with blueprints pulled from archives only the old noble families remembered.

  Sevika rarely wrote. She spoke. And when she did, the room listened. She didn’t pretend to care about diplomacy. She cared about supply lines, clean water, and heat during the winter. “Build what people can touch,” she would say. “They’ll trust that before they ever trust a flag.”

  Caitlyn didn’t argue.

  She took notes. She poured the tea. She negotiated. She learned.

  They met once a week in the Manor’s west drawing room. A place her mother had once used for garden parties was now littered with trade drafts and mechanical prototypes. The chandelier still hung above it all like a relic of a world too fragile to survive.

  Caitlyn was learning to shoot again.

  Her depth perception was untrustworthy, the recoil harder to compensate for, but she found peace in the ritual of it, in loading, aiming, and exhaling. The rifle braced against her shoulder was steadier than most people. The target didn’t lie. It didn’t pity.

  She hit bullseyes again, eventually. Fewer than before, but the weight of the weapon felt like coming home.

  Her father watched her practice from the garden steps some mornings, tea in hand. They didn’t talk during those moments. They didn’t need to. His presence was enough. She was rebuilding. Not from scratch. From ruin.

And still, some nights, when the Manor quieted, and she sat in her study long past the hour she should have gone to bed, she would find one of the letters waiting on her desk.

  Dear Ms. Kiramman,
  As per the Enforcer Oversight Committee, we again extend our offer for you to return to active duty. The city needs stability. It needs people with experience, with legacy.

  We need you.

  She never responded.

  Tonight’s was the fourth letter this month. Neatly folded and Council-sealed, the script tight and formal, each line heavy with implication. Caitlyn stared at it under the golden pool of her desk lamp. Her hand rested on the open envelope, the flap torn too cleanly for someone who hadn’t made up her mind.

  They didn’t say the word symbol, but they didn’t have to. She knew what they wanted. A Kiramman in uniform. A reminder that the Enforcers still had a conscience, that the badge still meant something.

  She ran her thumb over the top of the letter. Her nails were chipped. She hadn’t painted them since Vi died.

   Vi.

  The name drifted in uninvited, but not unwelcome. Like it always did when the badge came up.

  Vi, in her gauntlets, cursing at policy papers and telling her the only thing Councils were good for was giving you a headache. Vi, breaking protocol just to bring food to kids hiding under flood stairs. Vi, who hated uniforms, who said they would never stop being weapons pointed downward.

  And Vi, who still wore hers when Caitlyn asked her to. Not for the institution, but for her.

  Caitlyn folded the letter in half, then again more slowly. She pressed it flat against the table. Her eye burned from the long night, but she didn't look away.

  Did she want to go back? No. Yes. Not like before.

  There were parts of herself that still wanted the clean certainty of a case file, of black-and-white orders, but too much had turned gray since. Vi had taught her how to fight in the dark. How to see the outlines of people through smoke. How to choose, not what was easy. Not what was expected, just what mattered.

  Caitlyn rose, walked to the liquor cabinet she rarely touched, and poured herself a finger of something aged and sharp. She lifted the glass to the empty corner of the room, where Vi might have leaned against the wall, arms crossed, smirking.

  “To you,” she murmured.

  She drank.

  The letter stayed unopened on the desk behind her.

The knock came just past midnight.

Three slow raps, spaced too evenly to be a drunk and too bold to be a thief. Caitlyn paused mid-sentence, quill still poised over parchment, ink blurring slightly on the downstroke of a word she no longer cared to finish. Her head ached—too much tea, not enough sleep—but the sound peeled through the silence like a coin dropped down a well.

  She reached for her sidearm out of habit, and didn’t draw it.

  Instead, she rose. This house still didn’t feel fully hers, even after all this time. Ghosts didn’t rattle chains here. They hung in portraits, breathed through floorboards, and whispered from letters unopened in drawers.

  She opened the door. And there she was.

  Jinx.

  Her boots were scuffed, one lace untied. Her coat was far too large, hanging off her frame like she had stolen it from a corpse. Her hair was braided loosely tonight, twin ropes barely held together, a few strands sticking up like static had kissed her. Her eyes gleamed, feral and clever. Tired.

  Caitlyn arched a brow. “You’re knocking now?”

  Jinx grinned, crooked and unrepentant. “You said the front door.”

  Caitlyn blinked. Then, finally, she rolled her eye. “Of course I did.”

  Jinx didn’t wait for an invitation. She brushed past, boots thudding against the floor with the confidence of someone who no longer considered herself a stranger. She wandered, touching nothing and everything with her gaze. Caitlyn followed at a distance, watching her like a tethered storm.

  Eventually, they ended up in the garden.

  The air was cool, early spring clinging to the night with long, pale fingers. Moonlight pooled in the crocus beds. The cherry tree by the east wall was just beginning to bloom, blush-pink petals soft as regret. Caitlyn poured the tea. It was chamomile, steeped longer than necessary.

  She sipped. Jinx took one swallow, made a face like she had been poisoned, and set her cup down in the grass with exaggerated disgust. “Why does this taste like dead flowers and sadness?”

  Caitlyn didn’t smile, but something in her expression thawed. “Because it is dead flowers and sadness. You don’t have to drink it.”

  “Good,” Jinx muttered. “I was considering swallowing a bullet instead.”

  They sat side by side on the garden bench, worn stone warm beneath them. Not close, nor touching. Just there.

  The silence stretched, but it wasn’t cruel.

  Almost a year. Twelve months since the sky fell. Since the tower. Since Vi.

  “She used to sit here,” Caitlyn said, voice barely above a breath. “In the mornings before the battle. Always early. She said the birds annoyed her less than people.”

  Jinx huffed a quiet laugh. “That sounds like her.”

  “She would steal the last of the scones and deny it, even with crumbs on her mouth.”

  “Rude.”

  “She broke a vase on an end table when she tripped in the hall.”

  “Drunk?”

  “No. Angy, in fact. She said the vase looked smug.”

  Jinx snorted. The wind curled around them. The tea cooled. Petals fell like feathers.

  “She’d hate how quiet we’ve become,” Jinx said, more to the garden than to Caitlyn. “She’d want to shake us until we were all screaming again. Or laughing. Or doing something. ”

  “She’d hate how we’re hurting.”

  “She’d also be the first to punch someone for crying,” Jinx added. “And then cry herself when no one was looking.”

  Caitlyn’s throat tightened. She looked at Jinx—not the gunner, not the manic ghost girl, but the sister. The last thing Vi had left behind.

  “You’re different,” she said.

  Jinx shrugged. “So are you.” A pause. “Your aim’s worse now.”

  Caitlyn blinked. “You’ve been watching me?”

  “I always do,” Jinx said, like it was obvious. “Gotta make sure you don’t shoot your own foot off.”

  Caitlyn rolled her eye again. “I’ve adjusted.”

  Jinx looked over then, really looking. Her gaze flicked to the eyepatch, then away. It was not pitying, not mocking, just knowing.

  “You survived,” Jinx said. “She’d be glad.”

  “So did you.”

  A long breath passed between them, a weight unspoken.

  Caitlyn reached forward and picked up Jinx’s abandoned teacup. “You could try something else next time. The kitchen isn’t locked.”

  Jinx looked at her. “You expect me to cook?”

  “I expect you to show up again.”

  Jinx’s expression twisted, caught between surprise and something older. Something aching. “I might,” she said. “If the tea’s less terrible.”

  Caitlyn lifted her cup. “No promises.”

  And for the first time that night, Jinx smiled, real and small, almost shy, like maybe this moment was enough.

  They didn’t talk about grief again. They didn’t need to. It lived in the space between them, but no longer as a wall.

  The garden watched. The moon listened. The petals kept falling. And, for now, they sat quietly together.

Chapter Text

The bridge was different now.

  It was not rebuilt. No, they had left the cracks visible. The scorch marks, the clawed-up railings, and the bloodstains faded, but never truly gone. It stood like a monument to both what had broken and what had endured.

  They called it The Unity Crossing now. It was not Caitlyn’s idea. She found the name too clean, too idealistic, but she didn’t argue when the vote passed. 

  She had learned to let some things go. Others, not so much.

  The crowd was already gathering when she arrived. Torchlight flickered against the stone, casting long, shifting shadows over the cobbled path. Someone had strung lanterns above the railing with Zaunite scrap glass, catching the light like fragments of a shattered star. There were tables at either end, laid out with parchment squares, bundles of charcoal and string.

  Names. This was a night for names.

  Caitlyn walked slowly, her leg still stiff in the cold, though the cane had long since been retired. Her coat flared around her calves, the Kiramman crest newly absent from the collar. She moved like someone who had forgotten how to hurry.

  Sevika stood already near the center flame, arms crossed, expression unreadable. She wore her usual coat, patched and stained with time, and her mechanical hand clicked faintly as she flexed it, maybe from nerves, maybe just because it was cold. Ekko lingered near one of the tables, speaking with a girl too young to have known Vi, but who held her paper like it was sacred. His hair was longer now, twisted into ropes. 

  He looked older. Stronger. A leader.

  Jinx… Caitlyn spotted her last.

  She was on the far side of the bridge, perched atop the stone railing like a cat daring gravity to notice. Her boots dangled. Her goggles sat skewed atop her head, hair wild as ever. She had a strip of parchment tucked behind one ear, a stick of charcoal between her teeth like a lollipop.

  She looked up when Caitlyn approached, grinning as though nothing about the night was fragile. “Look who finally decided to play with the rest of the orphans,” she drawled.

  Caitlyn sighed. “I’m not in the mood, Jinx.”

  “You never are.” But her tone was gentler than usual, the smirk lacking its usual venom.

  They gathered near the fire just before the hour struck. Caitlyn, Sevika, Ekko, Jinx—the strangest constellation of people Vi had ever loved, tethered by grief and something sharper. Memory, maybe. A ghost’s gravity.

  Caitlyn held her parchment tight in one gloved hand. The charcoal had stained the skin of her palm. On the square, she had written Vi. Just that. Nothing else. No rank. No title. No surname.

  She didn’t need any of it.

  Next to her, Sevika lit her paper without fanfare. She didn’t read it out loud. She just tossed it into the flame like it owed her something. Her face was tight, eyes fixed forward, jaw clenched hard enough to crack.

  Ekko stepped forward next. He held three papers. He burned them all at once. “I hope you’re watching, old man,” he murmured. “We’re still here.”

  Jinx came last.

  She pulled the parchment from behind her ear and stared at it long enough that Caitlyn thought she might change her mind. But then she moved forward, lips twitching. “To the loudest, dumbest, bravest bitch I’ve ever loved.” She lit the paper and watched it curl. “I miss you, sis.”

  The fire caught each name like a kiss. Embers rose, swirling into the night sky like small, defiant stars. Dozens, hundreds, each a name, a memory, a promise.

  Caitlyn stepped closer to the railing, her eye tracking the sparks as they rose. She didn’t cry. Not tonight.

  Instead, she breathed, deeply and fully. Vi’s name still burned in her throat, but it didn’t choke her anymore. It lit her from within.

  Jinx stood beside her, fingers drumming a rhythm only she could hear. Sevika smoked, eyes fixed on the horizon. Ekko leaned against the railing, shoulders bowed just slightly.

  They stood there as the embers danced upward.

And, above them, the sky held all their names.

The embers had long since faded.

  The last of the crowd was dispersing in soft murmurs, drifting toward carriages or alleyways or the promise of comfort, whatever form it took. Caitlyn stood for a while longer at the edge of the bridge, watching the reflection of lanterns shimmer in the water below. Wind curled around her coat, teasing loose strands of hair into her face. The quiet after ritual always unnerved her. It felt too fragile, like silence might break if you breathed wrong.

  She turned to leave and caught a flash of copper and white in her peripheral. Ekko, alone. He was standing a few meters off, half-shadowed beneath one of the broken archways, his back to the light. His posture was too still, arms crossed over his chest, head tilted up to the stars like they might speak back.

  She approached without calling out. He didn’t turn, didn’t flinch, just said, “You’re quiet tonight.”

  “I’ve spent most of the evening listening.”

  Ekko huffed, a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You’re good at that.”

  She joined him in the shadows. The air here was cooler, more private somehow, a pocket of night untouched by firelight.

  “You disappeared after the last paper burned,” Caitlyn said softly.

  “I didn’t feel like talking to strangers.”

  “You’re not obligated to play hero.”

  “Too late.” He cracked a grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Should’ve said that a year ago.”

  She studied him, this boy-warrior who had once seemed impossibly young. There were streaks of silver in his braids now. Not natural. Not dye. Just… residue. Of something she didn’t quite understand.

  “What’s on your mind?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “Other versions of us.”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  Ekko tilted his head, gaze still fixed on the stars. “Sometimes I wonder… if there’s a world where she made it out. Where she didn’t go into that tower alone. Where you and I and Sevika and even Jinx figured our shit out earlier.”

  Caitlyn’s brow furrowed. “You mean… metaphorically?”

  “No,” Ekko said, and finally turned to face her. His eyes glinted with something electric, something old and impossibly young all at once. “Not metaphorically. I mean other timelines. Other lives. ”

  Caitlyn blinked. “Is this about the Anomaly? The battle?”  

  Ekko shrugged. “That was a side effect. A tear in something bigger. I’ve been… seeing things. Not just hallucinations. Not dreams.” He hesitated. “Real places. Real me’s. Some with gauntlets. Some with blood on their hands. Some with… peace.”

  Caitlyn’s mouth was dry. “You never told me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

  “I might not.” She paused. “But I’m listening.”

  Ekko breathed in through his nose. “There’s a version of me that saved her. Vi. Pulled her out just in time. There’s a version of you who never lost your eye. A version of Zaun that didn’t have to bleed for anyone to notice it mattered.”

  She stared. The night stretched long and quiet around them.

  “And do those versions… feel better ?” she asked.

  Ekko’s expression darkened. “No. That’s the thing. Some of them still lose her. Some of them lose you. Some of them burn the world down just to stop the ache. There’s no perfect thread, Cait. No perfect us. Just different shapes of pain, different ways we hold the same fire.”

  Caitlyn looked down at her hands. The fingers that trembled some nights, the scars still hidden beneath sleeves. The name Vi written in her bones like a second signature.

  “Why tell me now?” she asked.

  “Because tonight felt like a closed loop,” Ekko said. “Like maybe that version—the one where she dies, where we stand on a bridge burning her name—was meant to happen. And I needed to know if I could live with it.”

  Caitlyn looked up at him. “And can you?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, as if searching for the version of himself who could.

  Then he nodded. “I think I have to.”

  She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know what I believe about timelines,” she said. “But I believe she’d want us to try.”

  Ekko smiled, tired, yet grateful. “Yeah.”

  The wind stirred again. Somewhere downriver, a lantern floated, its light small and persistent.

  Caitlyn turned back toward the Manor. “Come by tomorrow. There’s tea. And Sevika’s supposed to yell at me about water permits.”

  Ekko grinned. “Sounds like a party.”

  They parted without ceremony, no goodbyes, no handshakes, just the understanding of people bound by something older than time: grief, love, the echo of someone they both still carried.

  And somewhere, in a version of the world neither of them would ever reach, Vi laughed into the wind.

The streets were warm with life.

  Not loud, not celebratory, just alive . 

  Lanterns still glowed from the memorial, casting soft halos over the cobblestones, and the air held the scent of hot oil, roasted roots, something sweet on the wind. Down here, in the lower ward, time moved more slowly. The stalls stayed open late, laughter cracked the dusk open in careful pieces, and grief softened its edges around full bellies and shared memories.

  Caitlyn walked without hurrying. She didn’t need directions. She followed the sound of Jinx’s laughter, sharp and unmistakable. She found them tucked beneath a faded canvas awning, sitting on uneven stools around a warped wooden table. A lantern swung overhead, throwing gold across their faces, shadows dancing in slow spirals.

  Jinx leaned back with her boots propped against the table’s leg, chopsticks dangling from her fingers. Her mouth was stained with sauce, and her cheeks glowed with the kind of heat that didn’t come from food alone. Sevika sat beside her, sleeves rolled up, cybernetic arm glinting under the low light. She had a plate of skewers in front of her, half gone, and a bottle of something unmarked resting loosely in one hand. Her posture was slouched but alert, like an old soldier never quite off-duty.

  They were laughing.

  Caitlyn froze for a moment at the edge of the light, watching. Listening.

  “…and I swear,” Sevika was saying. “She actually tried to punch through a wall to get to that goddamned record player.”

  “She said music made her fight better,” Jinx cackled. “Like, what, she needed a theme song ? Who does that?”

  “She said it gave her rhythm,” Sevika replied, deadpan. “So she could hit people on the beat.”

  “Oh my God ,” Jinx wheezed. “I remember that night. Vander’s birthday. She sang all the way through it. Awful voice, like gravel in a tin bucket.”

  “She yelled more than sang.”

  “She tried to harmonize with me. ”

  “Tragic.”

  Caitlyn swallowed. Her hands itched. Her chest ached. And still, she didn’t move.

  Then Jinx looked up and caught her in the shadows. And, with no ceremony, no warning, she patted the empty stool beside her.

  There was hints of a grin. Crooked. Real. “Don’t just lurk, Cupcake. We’ve got a whole night to roast your dead girlfriend.”

  Caitlyn arched a brow, but something warm loosened behind her ribs. She stepped into the circle of lantern-light, let it gild her scars, her eyepatch, the parts of her that still ached, and lowered herself onto the stool.

  Jinx shoved a plate toward her. “Try the pork buns. They’re full of lies.”

  Caitlyn blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Mine said fortune awaits. All I got was indigestion.”

  Sevika chuckled. “She means they’re spicy. Try one.”

  Caitlyn took the plate, delicately, like it might combust. She bit in. It was spicy, enough to sting. But it was good. They sat in easy, flickering quiet for a moment. And then, like a tide pulling back in, the stories resumed.

  “I remember the first time Vi met my mother,” Caitlyn said, almost without thinking. “She bowed. Bowed. Then she knocked over a vase trying to stand straight again.”

  “Bet she didn’t apologize.”

  “She offered to fix it. With duct tape.”

  Sevika barked a laugh. “Sounds about right.”

  “She told me once,” Jinx said, her voice softer now. “That you walked like you owned the world. She hated it. She thought you were arrogant.”

  Caitlyn smiled faintly. “She told me you were a feral raccoon and I should shoot you on sight.”

  Jinx laughed. “Gods, I miss her.”

  Sevika raised the bottle and tipped it slightly. “We all do.”

  They kept talking. They kept remembering.

  Vi as a girl with fists too big for her body and a mouth too fast for her brain. Vi bruised and beautiful and laughing in the middle of chaos. Vi who stitched people together with punches and promises.

  Caitlyn leaned back eventually, head tilted toward the stars she could barely see through the lantern haze. She let their voices wrap around her like warmth. She let herself miss.

And in this small circle, over pork buns and memory, she felt the ache shift.

  Not disappear. Never disappear. But soften.

  They were here.

  And so was Vi. In every story. Every laugh. Every ragged edge smoothed by time and telling.

  Jinx knocked her shoulder lightly. “Hey, don’t get all misty on us, detective. We’ve got, like, ten more embarrassing stories to go.”

  Caitlyn smiled. “Only ten?”

  Sevika smirked. “That’s just the warm-up.”

  And they stayed there, long into the night, surrounded by light and loss and the love that still lived in their bones.

It was hours past midnight now, and the streets had quieted into something more sacred than silence. The lanterns swayed gently overhead, burning low, casting long threads of amber light across the cobblestones. A dog barked once, distant. A cat darted across a roofline, vanishing like smoke. The air was warm with the scent of scorched oil and leftover spice. Somewhere, someone played a cracked old violin, soft and slow.

  Caitlyn sat with her hands wrapped around a half-empty tea cup gone cold, her knees pulled in slightly, posture relaxed but eyes sharp. She hadn’t laughed like that in months, not that real, shoulder-shaking, aching kind of laughter that left you hollow and full all at once.

  Sevika was lighting another cigarette, her voice lower now, the words trailing off into something close to reverence. Jinx had stretched out across two stools, fingers woven through her hair, her face flushed from too much sugar, too much everything.

  That was when the feeling hit like a sudden drop in pressure, a vacuum behind the ribs.

  Caitlyn’s smile faltered. Her fingers tightened slightly around the cup. “Has anyone seen Ekko?” she asked, trying to keep her tone even.

  Sevika looked up first. “Thought he left after the bridge,” she said with a shrug. “Didn’t see him after that.”

  Caitlyn turned to Jinx.

  “You’re always watching him,” she said. “Did he say anything?”

  Jinx blinked, half-lidded, expression unreadable for a beat too long. Then she sat up, slowly, spine unfolding like a hinge. “He said something earlier. Before the ceremony. Something about… patterns. Timing. How the days feel like loops.”

  Caitlyn’s stomach knotted. “He didn’t come back to the garden.”

  “No.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  Jinx chewed the inside of her cheek. Her eyes, bright as ever, flicked toward some distant horizon only she could see. “No. But he’s been… weird lately. Not in the bad way. Just… off. Twitchy. Like he’s waiting for something.”

  Sevika exhaled smoke, eyes narrowing. “He’s not dumb enough to try anything without telling someone. Not anymore.”

  “No,” Caitlyn said, standing, already reaching for her coat. “He’s not. But he’s also not one to let go of a thread once he’s pulled it.”

  Jinx tilted her head. “You think this is about the multiverse crap?”

  “He wasn’t just speculating,” Caitlyn said. Her voice was firmer now. “You didn’t hear him. He spoke like someone who’s seen things.”

Jinx didn’t laugh. She didn’t argue.

  She just said, quietly, “He always said the clock tower showed him what he needed most. That it wasn’t about fixing time, but finding the version of yourself that could live with what happened.”

  Caitlyn met her gaze. “He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”

  Jinx shrugged, but the movement was too sharp, too brittle. “Maybe he thought we’d try to stop him.”

  The silence grew teeth.

  Caitlyn pushed back from the table. Her boots echoed too loud against the stone. She looked at them both—at Sevika’s steady gaze, at Jinx’s half-open mouth, her unreadable frown.

  “I’ll be back,” Caitlyn said.

  “You sure?” Sevika asked.

  “No.”

  She fastened her coat. The chill had returned to the air, and with it, a strange tightness in her chest. She turned toward the shadows, the distant shimmer of the old clocktower in the north, still broken at its peak, still ticking in uneven rhythm.

  She didn’t know why, exactly, but that’s where she headed. To time. To memory. To the edge of the world, where things cracked open.

  Ekko had always walked the line between genius and recklessness. And, tonight, the stars felt too quiet.

  And Caitlyn Kiramman had never been one to let someone vanish without a fight.

The city thinned the further she climbed.

  Stone gave way to iron. Pavement to rusted steps. The old bridges that webbed the upper reaches of Zaun hung silent in the dark, slick with dew, whispering with wind.

  The clocktower loomed above it all, jagged at the crown where war had torn through its ribs. It still ticked, impossibly so, gears grinding behind cracked faces, hands circling their fractured dance. A monument to time survived, not repaired. Inside, it smelled of solder and ozone, scorched copper and stale oil. The upper levels had long since collapsed, but a single winding staircase remained, bolted into the outer wall like an afterthought. She climbed it slowly, silently, breath tight in her chest, hand brushing the old railing.

  She found Ekko near the top, half-lit by the blue glow of a machine he hadn’t meant her to see. He startled when she stepped into view. Not just surprised, but guilty.

  “Caitlyn,” he said, voice too quick. “I didn’t expect—”

  “You weren’t at the bridge,” she interrupted. “You weren’t at the garden. You disappeared.”

  He wiped his hands on a rag that was already stained with grease and old blood. His eyes flicked over her shoulder, past her, anywhere but at her. “I needed space. That’s all.”

  Caitlyn narrowed her eye. “Don’t lie to me, Ekko.”

  She pushed past him, and he didn’t stop her.

  The contraption sat on an old steel table warped by time. Cables coiled around it like veins, pulsing faintly. The glow was unmistakable—bright, cerulean, alive. It cast dancing reflections on the walls, flickered against the exposed gears of the clocktower.

  It was Hextech, refined and stabilized. Active.

  Caitlyn froze.

  The humming filled the chamber now like a rhythm. A heartbeat. Time gathering itself in one single, unnatural breath.

  She turned slowly. Her voice was ice. “Ekko.”

  He flinched.

  “Do you know what this looks like?”

  He raised his hands. “It’s not what you think—”

  “It’s Hextech. ” Her words sliced through him. “You’re using banned material. You’re tampering with energy we outlawed for a reason. ”

  Ekko’s jaw clenched. “You think I don’t know what it did? You think I don’t remember the crater where Progress Day used to be? The bodies? The screaming?”

  “Then why ?”

  “Because we never finished the conversation,” he snapped. “Because we outlawed a tool, not the impulse. People still want it. They still dig for it. Still dream of what could have been. ”

  Caitlyn stepped closer. “You’re not dreaming, Ekko. You’re building. ”

  He looked away. “It’s not for power. It’s not for war. It’s—” He faltered. 

  The words caught in his throat.

  Caitlyn’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s for her, isn’t it?”

   Her. 

  Ekko said nothing. The silence was answer enough.

  “You said it wasn’t about fixing the past.”

  He ran a hand through his braids, fingers trembling. “I lied.”

  Caitlyn stepped toward the machine. The glow touched her boots, her coat, her scars. Her eye reflected it like frost catching moonlight. “Do you even know what it does?”

  “I think it’s a gate,” Ekko whispered. “A window. Maybe a door. It doesn’t travel through time. Not exactly. It listens. Echoes. It finds. ”

  “Finds what? ”

  He looked at her then, truly looked. “The version of us where she lived.”

  The words hit like a blow.

  Caitlyn drew in a slow, shaking breath. “And then what? You step through? Leave us behind? Risk everything to chase something that may not even exist?”

  Ekko’s voice was quiet now. “If you saw what I saw… you’d want to believe it too.”

  “I don’t want to believe,” she said, fire licking at the edges of her words. “I want to live. I want you to live. Here. With us. ”

  He looked small at that moment. Just a boy again. Not a revolutionary. Not a leader. Just a grieving child trying to rewind the clock with bleeding hands.

  “You don’t understand,” he whispered. “You still have her.”

  Caitlyn’s breath caught. Her throat tightened. “No,” she said. “I have memories. I have pain. But I don’t have her. ” She stepped between him and the machine. Her body, straight-backed, her eye fierce. “And I’m not going to lose you too.”

  The machine hummed louder now, sensing its own potential. Ekko stared at her, then at the glow, then back down at his hands.

  And, for a long moment, no one moved. No one breathed.

  “Just listen, Cait.”

  Ekko’s voice cracked, desperate now, pitched somewhere between pleading and defensive, as if he could still salvage it—her trust, the night, the line he had crossed.

  But Caitlyn was already shaking her head, too tired and too furious to let it pass. “I am listening. That’s what makes this worse.” Her voice was low, flinty with rage, sorrow’s sharpened edge. “You knew exactly what this was. What it could do. And you still built it.”

  “It’s not just about me—”

  “No, it is! ”

  The words cracked through the air, louder than she meant. A harsh echo ricocheted off the old iron walls, and the machine, like a beast startled in the dark, shuddered. Something sparked behind the main console, a brief, violent flicker.

  Ekko froze.

  Caitlyn’s breath hitched.

  The glow of the Hextech core pulsed rapidly now, heartbeat accelerating, the once-smooth hum giving way to a jittering static. Cables twitched. A copper plate clattered to the floor.

  “…that wasn’t me,” Ekko said slowly, voice tightening.

  “What did you do?”

  “ Nothing. I didn’t start it. I didn’t even touch— ”

  Another pulse. Brighter. Wrong. The glow cracked at the edges, turning from blue to white , too sudden and sharp, like lightning caught inside a snowstorm.

  They both turned to the contraption. It ticked, but not like a clock. Like a bomb.

  “Turn it off,” Caitlyn barked. “Now.”

  “I—I can’t— It’s not responding to the sequence—” Ekko scrambled to the levers, his fingers flying over dials, punching keys with the speed of desperation. Sparks shot up from the base. One of the gears stuttered, spun backward, screamed.

  Caitlyn backed away, eyes locked on the machine. “What’s it doing?”

  “It’s not traveling, ” Ekko said, voice shaking. “It’s trying to open. ”

  “To what? ”

  “To somewhere else. ”

  The world flickered.

  Just for a breath. A sliver of time.

Caitlyn blinked, and for a moment, just a moment, she saw something through the machine’s core. A different sky. A hallway she didn’t know. Herself, standing still. Wearing something else. Smiling. Vi, whole and laughing, gloveless, leaning against the doorway alive. Alive. 

  And then it was gone.

  The clock tower groaned. The machine wailed.

  Ekko’s voice broke. “It’s destabilizing. ”

  Caitlyn ran to the side panel, pulled a wrench from the scattered tools and slammed it against the hex gear. Sparks flew. The panel buckled.

  “ It won’t shut down! ” Ekko shouted.

  She looked at him, truly looked, his hands shaking, eyes wide with horror and hope and helplessness.

  Then the flash came. A wave of blue, pure and radiant, burst from the center of the device. It swallowed the room, bled through their bodies, lit the air like starlight soaked in water.

  Caitlyn screamed without sound. She felt herself pulled, unmade, scattered into light. Then white. Nothingness, endless and blinding, folding over and over like pages in a story unwritten. She reached out, tried to speak, tried to grab Ekko’s arm, but her fingers met only air, or time, or memory.

And then silence. Just the terrible stillness before the world begins again.

Pain tore her open. It was  a metaphor, not poetry, r eal.

  Like flame licking the marrow of her bones. Like her skin was being pulled off her in strips—boiled, stretched, rewoven. She tried to scream, but the sound fractured in her throat. Her lungs convulsed. Her blood sang the wrong tempo. The world had split at the seams and she was tumbling through it, unraveling like thread through a needle’s eye.

  Stop—make it stop—

  And then there was stillness.

  A gasp tore from her chest as Caitlyn shot upright.

  Her vision blurred, lungs pulling in ragged, trembling breaths. Her hands clenched at silk sheets, soft, fine, and embroidered with silver thread. Her legs tangled in them as she flailed upward, half falling from the edge of a bed that was too large, too familiar .

  She was in her bedroom. But not the one she remembered.

  This one gleamed. The wallpaper wasn’t faded. The books on the shelves weren’t hers. Her rifle case was missing. The photographs on the vanity were replaced. A younger version of herself smiling in pressed white linens, beside people she didn’t know. The air smelled like lilac soap and lemon polish. 

  She staggered to her feet, nearly slipping on the fine rug. Her knee didn’t ache. Her balance didn’t lean. Her cane was gone. She bolted for the bathroom, palms slamming against the doorframe as she stumbled through, her pulse a screaming thing in her ears. The lights flicked on automatically. The mirror, wide and gold-framed, reflected a stranger.

  Caitlyn stared. Both of her eyes looked back. She reached up with trembling fingers and touched her face. She took in the rest—her hair longer, pinned back neatly. Her body wrapped in silk pajamas, violet and embroidered, the kind she hadn’t worn in years. The kind her mother used to gift her every winter.

  “No,” Caitlyn whispered.

  It rose too fast.

  She turned and vomited into the sink, acidic and violent. Her legs gave, and she half-collapsed against the marble counter, trembling as bile scorched her throat.

  Her mind reeled, grasping for anything solid. The bridge. The ceremony. Jinx and Sevika. Ekko. The machine. The flash.

  Another timeline. Another thread. She had seen them in the burst, fractals of herself, other versions, other lives—

  “Caitlyn?”

  Her blood ran cold.

  A voice. It was familiar, crisp, and controlled. But it was impossible.

  The bedroom door pushed open behind her. “Darling, are you all right? I heard something—”

  Caitlyn turned and came face-to-face with her mother.

  Cassandra Kiramman stood framed in soft lamplight, wrapped in a pearl-gray robe, hair pinned in that elegant twist she never wore before the accident. Her face was exactly as Caitlyn remembered it, flawless and regal.

  Not ash. Not buried. Not gone. Alive. Breathing.

  “Cait?” her mother asked again, concern shading her voice. “What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”

  Caitlyn’s knees buckled. She caught herself against the sink again, the cold bite of porcelain her only anchor.

  This wasn’t right. This wasn’t her world.

  Cassandra crossed the room, already reaching to help. “Caitlyn, you’re pale—darling, look at me—”

  But Caitlyn couldn’t. She couldn’t. Her throat burned. Her chest felt split open.

  The machine had worked. And she had no idea where she was.