“I have one more question before we part for tonight,” I said to Sophie, slipping another can of spray paint into my bag.

  “What is it?”

  “How’s life here, in general? It seems more dangerous just stepping outside than it ever was on my side. You’ve got drakes flying around, the Unreflected, all those monsters…”

  She shrugged, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “It’s not like that on your side? Must be nice. But it’s not that bad here. Attacks happen, sure, but most of the time, we get by. You just have to be careful not to go out at night, when they show up more often. During the day, life’s pretty safe in the city. We’ve got the police for the worst of it. Oh! And never, ever go into the splintered places.”

  “You’re aware of them?” I asked, surprised.

  “Of course I am. Parents teach their kids early to stay away from splinters, no matter how curious you get.”

  It made perfect sense, but it still felt strange hearing it said so casually. I’d been warned that this world was more dangerous, and it was, but not unbearably so. Not if you knew where to walk and what to avoid. The concrete jungles and the splintered zones were deadly, sure, but outside of those, it was almost… normal. Different, but still recognizable.

  I wanted to ask her how children even came to be in this world, if they were born here like in ours, or created somehow, but decided to leave that for another time.

  “Thanks,” I said finally. “That’s been gnawing at me. I was told your world was very dangerous, but I think I’d drop the ‘very.’ Just dangerous fits better.”

  Sophie laughed softly. “Yeah. Dangerous is enough. Life generally is, right?”

  “Yes. It is,” I said, the smile slipping from my face. “It was really nice talking to you, Soph. More than I expected. I came into this world with a lot of prejudice… things that were just imprinted onto me. I’m trying to let go of that, little by little.”

  “You’re just like her,” she said suddenly.

  That simple sentence hit me harder than I’d like to admit. I didn’t feel like her, like the other me. Just myself.

  “Thanks,” I said quietly. Then I straightened, exhaling. “I have to go now.”

  At my command, the Domain obeyed. A door appeared beside us, leading out into the shared space beyond. I opened it, revealing the familiar common room.

  “This is home,” I said simply.

  “I can see that,” she replied with a light laugh that eased the tension between us.

  “Am I too formal?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” she teased, and then stepped forward to hug me. “I hope to see you again soon.”

  Her gaze flicked toward the soul core, and I felt that this stolen look, stole a bit of her happiness from her in turn, as her smile flattened.

  “Same,” I said, returning the smile. “Take care, Soph.”

  She crossed the threshold, and as soon as the door shut behind her, I let it dissolve into nothing. The air went still again, leaving only me, the soft hum of the Domain, and the lingering warmth of that brief connection.

  **********

  After barely half an hour of sleep and a few more minutes spent painting the EoT’s fort into my Spellbook, I slipped the mask back on and raised the hood. My vision bloomed outward the moment the eyes accepted my Authority, instincts syncing with the power like muscle memory. It felt good again—right—to see more, to hear more, to smell the world in ways that painted meaning into every unseen corner.

  “Anansi, Lio,” I called softly. “I have a task for you both. Take a safe position high in the sky and monitor enemy movement. If anything dangerous comes close, I want to know before it gets within breathing distance.”

  Liora shifted his colors in response, his scales darkening to near-black with only his horns glowing faintly in shadowlight. From my belt, I pulled an infused eye card and held it out to him. He caught it neatly between his tiny paws.

  “If you hold it just right, I can see through that eye,” I explained. “Or, if you allow me, I could paint another one on your forehead and use it as a direct link. What do you say?”

  His horns flickered with a sharp green pulse before he handed the card back.

  [Good idea.] Anansi chimed in through our link, her voice a low vibration in the back of my mind.

  “Alright then.” I knelt, flipping open my makeup kit. Liora stayed remarkably still—tense, but trusting—as I painted the delicate outline of an eye on his forehead. It shimmered faintly when the ink dried, accepting my magic with a soft hum as rest of the colors filled it.

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  “There,” I said, leaning back to check my work. “Perfect. Try not to blink too much.”

  He gave me a small, resigned snort that almost sounded like a laugh.

  “My plan’s real simple,” I said, as the weight of what came next settled over the quiet. “So listen up, guys…”

  **********

  They’d made upgrades since my last visit, visible even from the ground. Fresh guard towers rose like crooked teeth from the walkways above the wall that circled the great tree at the fort’s heart. From Liora’s vantage point high above, I could see almost as much as I wanted to, though the massive crown of that ancient trunk made it difficult. Its branches stretched wide, shading nearly the entire courtyard in a lattice of shadows and silver-green light.

  A few tent-like structures had been raised beneath it, webbed with cables that coiled up the trunk and into the canopy like veins feeding a living machine. About twenty guards patrolled the wall, pacing the pathways that ringed the compound, each one illuminated by the harsh rhythm of mounted searchlights that swept the outer perimeter with mechanical precision. Liora also caught sight of drones gliding between the towers. Smooth and almost silent, their red lenses pulsing like eyes.

  Getting in through any conventional method would’ve been suicide. Or, at best, a very quick exercise in dying with style. Luckily, I wasn’t a conventional thief anymore. Unluckily, my original plan, to paint on the outer wall, was now impossible. The moment I stepped into one of those beams, I’d be cooked.

  So much for plan A.

  Time for plan B, Anansi.

  [Already on it. I told the serpent to do his job.]

  A second later, I felt it, the faint tug in my aura as a card slipped free from Liora’s claws. It drifted down through the dense canopy, the shadows swallowing it whole. I breathed power into the link, feeding it a pulse of shadowlight. The eye and the ear painted on the card flared to life, and my senses spread through it like ink in water.

  Branches surrounded it on all sides, gnarled and tangled, whispering against one another in the faint wind. The card spun once, then embedded itself halfway into the bark of the great tree, still high above the ground, but secure.

  Perfect. A foothold.

  I drew in a steady breath, let my body dissolve into motion, and blinked through space, reappearing beside the embedded card. The air shimmered as I landed, my limbs already spread instinctively, catching the branches like some agile monkey bred for the canopy.

  [Or a spider,] Anansi whispered, her tone seemed amused.

  I smirked but didn’t reply, too focused on the climb. The bark was slick and alive beneath my fingers, veins of green shadowlight pulsing faintly through the wood like liquid emeralds, threading upward into each leaf. The whole tree seemed to breathe like a living network of energy, impossibly old and beautiful. For a second, I just watched it in quiet awe. Then I remembered why I was here.

  I pressed close to the trunk, searching for a patch of bark free of those glowing veins. When I found one, I pulled out my paints and began to work. The thing I placed there wasn’t fancy, didn’t need to be. Fire and wood were natural conspirators. A few sweeping strokes, some curling lines to direct the energy, and the design was ready. Crude, maybe. But crude could still burn beautifully on such surface.

  I moved again, silent and fluid, lowering myself branch by branch. My movements had rhythm now, a thief’s balance guided by instinct and training. I slipped between the boughs until the canopy thinned, until I perched on the lowest branch still cloaked in enough leaves to hide me. The ground was far below, the guards hopefully still unaware.

  I extended my hand. On the tip of my index finger, the painted eye waited, dormant, a little gate of its own. I let my Authority bleed into it and used it to look around.

  There were three tents spread around the tree’s massive trunk.

  The first—medium?sized, with an antenna jutting from its side and a small portable generator humming beside it—seemed to serve as their comms hub. Two guards lingered near the setup, rifles slung low, more concerned with the outer gate than with what hid inside their perimeter. Sloppy. That was good.

  The second tent—the one nearest to me but opposite the trunk—was different. Thicker cables ran toward it, dozens of optic fibers coiling like roots into the ground before vanishing beneath its canvas walls. Shadowlight pulsed through them all, mostly green, coming from the trunk, but two thicker cords glowed with something stranger—pink shadowlight, vibrant and alive. It went into the tree.

  The third tent loomed near the wall—large, rectangular, utilitarian. A barracks, judging by the movement and the outlines of bunks visible through the fabric.

  My focus drifted back to the cables—judging by what Victor did in his own apartment, I bet my chances that the one closest to me would be where I had the biggest possibility of finding this tall man.

  I lowered myself slowly, each motion deliberate, until my feet touched the ground in silence. The rabbit enhancement of my boots muffled the sound, leaving the night undisturbed. The scent of blood that brought me here lingered in the air. Faint, metallic, leading me toward the large tent by the wall. A wounded soldier, perhaps. But beneath that, other scents twined. Four more heartbeats in that tent, three in the one strung with optic fibers. One of them was Victor; I could tell by the trace of the same mixture of smells I sensed in his workshop. It clung to him like a signature. The last tent, the comms hub, carried two more. Voices low, words lost even to my sharpened hearing.

  I crept along the massive trunk, pressing close to the bark that pulsed faintly with veins of green shadowlight. Where I found a patch unmarked, I painted again. Streaks of red, orange, and yellow, blending into the dim glow, hidden unless one knew to look. My fire didn’t need to be seen; only to wait for my command.

  Above and away from me, guards paced along the wall, their eyes fixed outward, never inward. The irony wasn’t lost on me. The danger was always within.

  I circled farther around the tree, tracing the path of the cables until I found their source, a hollow yawning at the base of the trunk. It was large, deep enough for several people to walk through side by side. A portal gate, maybe. Dormant now, but the air around it trembled faintly, as if remembering power.

  Two cards found their way into my hand. I flicked one toward the wall, where it vanished into shadow, and pressed the other, infused with cold steel resolve, into the tree’s skin. Then I reached through the invisible thread that connected me to the first and slipped through the world to it, reappearing beneath the walkway, wrapped in darkness.

  There, I painted. Over the wood and steel, I wove my fires: blue, white, red, orange, yellow, the colors of hunger, of the void that devours. My art was patient flame waiting to be born.

  Two hours passed in quiet rhythm: crawl, paint, vanish, breathe. By the end, fifty sigils surrounded me, sleeping embers within the reach of my will.

  If there was ever a moment to strike, to turn art into chaos—

  —it was now.