The world had no edges anymore. Only breath and pulse and the echo of names that no longer belonged to mouths.

Elaria came awake not in a place, but in a memory that was trying to remember itself. She lay suspended within a half-formed sky, clouds unraveling into threads of glass and colorless fire, all drifting through her fingertips. When she moved, the air rippled — and behind every ripple, a thousand mirrored selves blinked and vanished, as though she were being dreamed by someone ...