A week ago, the first thing Amy tasted was rain.

  When she opened her eyes she was in the body of a younger, dirtier Samantha. She looked into a puddle.

  For once, Samantha had an ordinary face, the one she wore before tampering her skin with Ysalva’s power.

  She wondered why Samantha was in the streets in such a sparkly city. Buildings made of crystal reached for the sky, glimmering despite the gray weather.

  Samantha was panting.

  Guards swept the gutters ahead, dragging the poor away. One boot lifted and came down toward Samantha’s side, but this time, a hand caught the soldier’s wrist.

  “Do you know what fascinates me?” the man asked, voice quiet enough to make the rain hesitate. “How easily people confuse endurance for virtue. You starve, and they call you strong. It’s the most elegant lie civilization ever told.”

  The soldier screamed, hand lifted, but Milo neutralized him with a sharp knife through the neck.

  The young man slumped, blood mixing with the rain.

  Milo shrugged off his cloak and placed it around Samantha’s shoulders, telling her to stand.

  “What’s your name?”

  Samantha’s throat worked. “Samantha. Who are you?” She stammered.

  “Malsavus.”

  He left without hurry as Samantha clutched the cloak like proof. Under all the ache and filth, something that had refused to die sat up and breathed.

  She followed him, peering around corners and chasing his back silently.

  Everywhere Malsavus went, the impossible began to look practical. He touched a fevered child; by morning the heat had gone. He made miracles happen.

  Priests called him blasphemy. The Emperor called him dangerous. But the people called him god.

  That made him inevitable.

  She couldn’t get the image of Milo out of her head.

  A handsome man who looked at her — the first to do so.

  She wasn’t a fired servant anymore in this deeply hierarchical society.

  She wasn’t trash.

  For the first time in a long time, she was motivated to live. Had a purpose.

  To learn more about him.

  So for the next few weeks, she did.

  She learned the routes, the pauses, the places where his miracles were prepared before they were performed. And through her efforts, she saw the seams, her ability to spy impressing even herself. She found the pipes that made the rain walk where he wanted it.

  The twins.

  The levers.

  The tricks behind the spectacle.

  He carried no magic, only instruments and intellect sharpened to the point of cruelty.

  Then, one day:

  “I can hear you breathing,” he said. “You should learn to arrive quietly.”

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  “You’re…divine, my lord.”

  Milo snorted. “Divinity,” he murmured, tightening a valve, “is only persuasion perfected.”

  He turned at last.

  “Isn’t that right, Samantha?”

  “You…remember me?”

  “Of course. You were everywhere.”

  Samantha flinched. She thought she had been sneaky.

  He smiled faintly. “The system said people like you, in your social position, need to serve and die. Yet you are defying them at every point. I saw you kill that guard to get to me. Do you regret it?

  Samantha swallowed. “No. I would do anything to know the truth. The empire lies. Besides, the Emperor hunts you,” she said. “Will you be okay?”

  “Ah, yes. The emperor is afraid of me.” His smile deepened. “Fear is always the first step toward worship.”

  “You think he’ll kneel?”

  “Oh, he already has. He just needs to notice.”

  Samantha stared. She should have hated him — the arrogance, the poise, the play.

  Instead, she felt a strange warmth blooming on her cheeks.

  “Why help me?” she whispered.

  He tilted his head as if studying a beautiful error.

  “Because you didn’t kneel. It would be a shame to waste that kind of defiance.”

  He stepped past her, brushing her shoulder as he went.

  The contact was nothing, yet to her it rearranged the air.

  “Careful,” he murmured. “Wonder is the most dangerous addiction.”

  When the cult of Malsavus got too powerful, the hunts began.

  —————

  The next day, he was gone.

  The bedroll lay folded, the instruments dismantled, every trace of his existence erased except the scent of iron and rain. Samantha stood in the doorway before she ran.

  Recklessly.

  Barefoot.

  Through alleys still slick with yesterday’s miracle. For a woman so stealthy she screamed his name. Through markets that smelled of spice and fear. Through the city that had learned to kneel overnight.

  The worst thought came to her. The emptiness in his eyes from the night before. Did he turn himself in?

  They caught her before dusk.

  Chains bit into her wrists. The imperial crowd jeered. The Emperor sat above it all, eyes shining as he had caught Malsavus’ most revered disciple. The pyre waited.

  But before the executioner could lift his torch, the sky tore open.

  A burst of light—no, smoke, no, illusion—spread like scripture across the square. The soldiers stumbled, their eyes full of phantom gods. And through it, walking calm as memory, came Malsavus.

  He didn’t look divine this time. He looked tired.

  He didn’t speak to the Emperor. He didn’t need to.

  He reached and freed her. She felt his warm hands before he was grabbed. Shoved into the fire instead.

  “Run,” he had said.

  There was no scream.

  No farewell.

  And she ran away.

  —————

  The next day, anger carried her forward.

  She was a heartbeat with no owner. She was hunted, captured, escaped, hunted again. The Empire called her plague. The priests called her blasphemy. The people called her madwoman.

  She called herself nothing at all. She screamed his name. She slept in ruins. Ate what rotted last. Fought in uprisings she didn’t believe in.

  Like a cockroach, she refused extinction.

  And one night, in the ashes of a burned cathedral, she found a book that hadn’t burned. Its cover was stone, its pages carved.

  It spoke of a goddess buried beneath the continent, shattered into shards that glowed like the memory of light. A goddess who had once opposed Cerceras, the god of submission.

  Samantha read until her fingers bled on the edges of the text. She found the tomb. She found the shards. And when she pressed one to her wrist, the world shifted.

  Her anger became her clarity. Her grief became her gospel.

  Milo, you sacrificed yourself…for me.

  Can you really look me in the eye and say you don’t love me?

  Why did you let me follow you?

  You didn’t care about your cult. You thought you had nothing.

  But you had me.

  Body and soul.

  Me.

  —-

  “He had nothing,: Samantha’s voice rasped through Amy, rain and smoke and a memory that tasted like iron. “No magic. Only clarity. You had nothing. I had nothing. Then he became everything. He made the impossible seem like a question worth asking.”

  “Please stop,” Amy croaked, fingers digging into the mattress. “I don’t want to be here. This isn’t love.”

  Samantha laughed, soft and terrible. “Love survives disillusionment. Worship needs it.” The words scraped like stones. For a moment the young man with rain in his hair stood at the edge of the square, eyes like a horizon that wouldn’t end.

  The memory thinned. Sunji’s paper screens slid into place. Silk under palms. Amy woke choking on clean air.

  “Mom!”

  Aurora was there in seconds, arms closing, voice small enough to be human. “Amy—”

  Amy sobbed, collapsing for the first time into her mother’s arms. Aurora’s hands trembled on her shoulders; her eyes were hard and bright in a way that made Amy look away.

  “It’s okay,” Aurora whispered, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  “He wasn’t a god,” Amy said, each word cracking. “He—he had no magic. He used tricks. The people…they knelt because they couldn’t tell the difference.”

  Aurora’s mouth flattened. She stepped closer, close enough that the light struck her cheekbone like a blade. Her voice went very, very low. “Shh.”

  Amy’s breath hitched. Aurora’s fingers dug into her forearm as if anchoring both of them.

  “If you want,” Aurora said, “I will kill Samantha. I will do everything.”

  The promise landed like a stone. Amy wanted to tell her it wouldn’t fix anything; she wanted to ask if killing would make the rain stop. But all she could do was bury her face against her mother and let the wordless terror unspool.