The future haunts me.

  It hangs above me as a ghostly specter that scales the remnant of the World Eater, a pitted monument of the Second Shattering, its flickering details solidifying the farther I flee from the Sacral Enclosure of House Azure, until it becomes my only point of focus.

  "Janus . . . Janus!" cry my unseen caretakers and would-be jailors.

  The specter flounders before arresting his descent on a protrusion. He hangs swaying, a hook that rips the very breath from my lungs, slender and empyreal, decked in the royal regalia of my ancient House, brown and golden. The youth looks back and down.

  His face is my face.

  Everything roils upon this realization, lines of forces dividing then dancing to a madman's murmurs, until I am the one dangling from the monument, the one looking back and down at my past self.

  It is happening again. I am drifting.

  Cold metal bites my fingers. Dawn air nips at my sandaled feet. I cling to these sensations, but my pulse thunders, trying to drag me into the temporal maelstrom.

  Warmth trickles across my upper lip. I wipe it away without looking. My fingers come back red.

  "No," I whisper. "Not today."

  Eyes closed, breath held, I turn inward to where the Inner Hell waits. Mother told me that each of us carries a version of the Hells inside us, not to wield but to contain. For optimates, those outer Hells are a source of power. For me, my Inner Hell devours what I dare not feel.

  Fear pounds against my ribs. The Inner Hell's threshold stretches endless before me, dark as a starless sky. Iron and silk against my mind. I grasp its edge. Push everything down into that hungry dark.

  It resists. Pulls. Hungers for more than I offer. But I am stronger. One harsh thrust of will, and the gate slams shut. The abyss stares back, patient and eternal.

  Calm floods in, chilling and pure. The heartbeat steadies, settling against the emptiness. The fear is distant now, trapped within the depths. Nothing is stronger than what we choose to contain, my mother once said.

  I open my eyes. Here, in this moment, I am clear, untouchable, and ready for what comes next.

  I press onward toward the peak. The path rises at a brutal angle until I reach the crest, where cold air bites, thin and bracing, as I take in the view.

  Malkiel unfolds like a living puzzle around me, its borders shifting in a rhythm only the trained eye can follow. The Dularch-Temple rises behind me, suspended in the liminal space between House Azure and House Vermilion, its white spires piercing upward into impossibility, marking the boundary between the two great Houses that have ruled since time immemorial.

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  House Azure spreads before me, its ethereal architecture a stark contrast to House Vermilion's distant crimson walls. Pale blue stone shimmers in the dawn light, creating an illusion of transparency, as if the entire palace floats on morning mist. Delicate spires reach skyward while thin sheets of fabric drift between them, casting ever-changing shadows across the grounds below.

  The palace gardens unfold in careful geometry, each courtyard a study in quiet contemplation. Here, a fountain flows in impossible slowness, its water catching light like liquid crystal. There, beneath gossamer canopies, meditation gardens offer sanctuary. And everywhere, carved into doorways and traced along pathways, hidden in the play of light and shadow, subtle engravings of the qilin reveal themselves only to those patient enough to look.

  Above me, the veiled skywalk connects the palace's main towers, a transparent bridge where I have spent countless hours watching the tesseract's eternal dance. From this height, it looks delicate as spider silk.

  For one breath, I let myself imagine standing here as Blue Dularch, coruler of this labyrinth of realms as my father had before me. The statues of fallen rulers watch, silent witnesses to my ambition.

  A cold horror creeps beneath the vision. Those mighty Dularchs, reduced to stone. For all their power, they too were...

  My nails bite my palms. The Inner Hell holds my fear, and in this moment, I hold only purpose. Today, everything changes.

  Movement catches my eye. A nest tucked in the shadowy crags, woven from metal and twigs. Two pale eggs tremble within, cracking like ice in spring.

  I move closer, holding my breath. They shimmer faintly, like illusions caught in the corner of my eye. They are not truly here, I know: echoes, creatures conjured by the strange layers of Malkiel, apparitions that live on the edge of unreality. But in this moment, they are as real as anything.

  Shells split and shatter, revealing ghost-chicks with dust-gold feathers. They shiver in the dawn, their tiny, skeletal forms barely clinging to existence.

  The larger one strikes, beak flashing. The smaller recoils, then fights back. They battle for space, for life, though they are nothing but echoes.

  Truth rises in my throat, bitter as bile.

  The weak are consumed.

  A gust of air pulls my gaze upward. There, floating beside me and the dead World Eater, is a figure. Cyra, my elder sister.

  She hovers like a phantom against the strange sky, her robes billowing as she stares through me. At only ten years old, she holds a presence far beyond her years. Platinum hair frames her oval face, catching light like a halo around practiced serenity. The bronze torq at her throat marks her as an optimate, worn like she was born to it.

  "Little brother," she says, her gaze dropping to my bloodstained fingers before rising to meet my eyes. "Today is not the day for games of Shadows and Seekers."

  Anger flares, white and hot. Not at her words but at her presence, at what it represents. I hide it behind curved lips.

  "The gardens are beautiful at dawn," I reply, ignoring her statement for spite.

  "They are. I have always preferred the view from higher ground, though. One sees things more clearly from a distance. Patterns. Trajectories. Where things will fall."

  "And yet you are here," I say. "Not distant at all."

  "Are you afraid?"

  I lower my gaze. The nest holds only one translucent form. It prances, fragile wings quivering as it steps around the empty space where its sibling fell, oblivious yet victorious.

  "Fear?" The word tastes like the hollow where mother should stand. "What is that?"