On the night a man died in her dream, Liora woke with a name that wasn't hers on the tip of her tongue.
“Evelyn.”
The name vanished with her breath. She sat bolt upright in bed, staring at the room that was still dark. Rain tapped patiently against the windowpane, as if someone outside was asking permission to come in.
Liora touched her neck. Her skin was damp with sweat. In the dream she'd just had, she stood in a burning city. Stone towers rose beneath a red sky while ash fell like snow. In front of her, a man knelt with one hand pressed to the wound in his chest.
Kael.
She had never met him. Yet in the dream, she knew his name. She knew the way he smiled when he was trying to hide his fear. She knew that the bloodstained hand had once held hers with the utmost care.
“Don't look at me like that,” Kael said in the dream.
Liora was about to answer, but a sword was already in her hand.
No. Not her hand.
Another woman's hand—the exact same hand as hers—raised the sword. The woman's face was hidden in shadow, but Liora recognized her voice when she whispered:
“Forgive me.”
The sword pierced Kael's chest.
Liora always woke before she could see the woman's face. Tonight was different. A moment before waking, the woman turned.
Her face was Liora's own.
She got out of bed and turned on the light. Yellow light filled the room, driving away the dark corners that looked too much like the city in her dream. On the table, the digital clock read 2:17 a.m.
Liora picked up a glass of water. Her hand was still trembling.
“Just a dream,” she said.
She had said that line for years. She'd said it when she was nine, after dreaming about a river flowing upward. She'd said it when she was fifteen, after seeing a shadowless boy standing in front of the house. She said it tonight, even though the pain in Kael's chest still felt like a wound clinging to her own body.
Liora took a sip of water.
Then every light in her apartment went out.
Not just the lights. The refrigerator stopped humming. The rain outside abruptly fell silent. Even the sounds of the city—car engines, the elevator, her neighbors' footsteps—vanished in an instant, as if the world were holding its breath.
In the window, Liora's reflection stood with a pale face.
But the reflection wasn't holding a glass.
It was holding a sword.
The glass slipped from Liora's hand and shattered on the floor.
The reflection in the window raised its head. Its lips moved without a sound.
Run.
Liora backed away. Her foot came down on a shard of glass, but she felt no pain. Outside the twelfth-floor window, the sky had changed. There were no buildings, no city lights, no rain.
Only a long white rift splitting the air.
The rift pulsed like a giant artery.
Something moved behind it.
Liora wanted to scream, but a strange voice filled the room first.
“So, you're Liora.”
A man stood in the middle of the room.
He hadn't entered through the door. He emerged from the shadow folded between the wardrobe and the wall, like someone who had just stepped out of the surface of a pool. His coat was black and wet, its hem smeared with golden dust. His hair fell over his forehead. Beneath his left collarbone, blue light pulsed from a mark shaped like a cracked circle.
Liora recognized that face.
The face from her dream.
Kael looked at her without warmth. There was no relief at finally finding someone he'd been searching for all this time. There was only hatred he'd nurtured for so long that it had turned into something calm.
“You…” Liora's voice broke. “You died.”
“In my world, yes.”
Kael stepped forward. Liora snatched a small knife from the kitchen table, though she knew it wouldn't help much. Kael watched her move, then let out a short, humorless laugh.
“She raised a knife like that too when she was afraid.”
“Who?”
“The person you killed.”
The air in the room suddenly felt colder.
Kael pulled something from beneath his coat. A silver pendant, cracked down the middle. He tossed it onto the table. The pendant sprang open, revealing a tiny photograph that stopped Liora's breath.
The face inside was hers.
It wasn't merely similar. The woman in the photograph had the exact same eyes, nose, and small scar near her eyebrow as Liora.
Beside the woman, Kael smiled. The same smile from the dream—a smile belonging to someone who had once felt safe.
“Her name was Evelyn,” Kael said. “She was my lover.”
Liora stared at the photograph. “I'm not her.”
“I know.”
“If you know that, why did you come?”
Kael raised a hand. The blue light from the mark on his chest spread across his palm, forming thin lines like shards of glass. The knife in Liora's hand trembled. From the white rift outside the window came a long scream that was not human.
“I came to deliver a message.”
Kael stopped just a few steps away from her.
“In my universe, you are the cause of Evelyn's death.”
Liora felt the floor shift beneath her feet.
“I don't even know her.”
“She knew you.”
“I never—”
“Before she died, Evelyn said that if I ever met you…” Kael looked at Liora's face, and for the first time, his hatred cracked beneath grief. “I was to ask why you chose to kill her.”
Outside, the rift in the sky pulsed harder.
Black lines appeared across the walls of Liora's room. One by one, the objects inside changed: books became sheets of leather covered in unfamiliar writing, the digital clock became an hourglass, and the rain soaking the glass transformed into shards of light.
Kael turned toward the window.
“We don't have much time.”
“We?”
“The gate didn't open just for me.”
Something slammed into the other side of the rift. The window cracked in a circular pattern. A long-fingered shadow crawled out from its center.
Kael looked back at Liora.
“This world is beginning to recognize the alternate version of yourself.”
Liora tightened her grip on the knife. “And what if I don't want to go with you?”
“Then I'll drag you.”
“To kill me?”
Kael fell silent.
For a moment, Liora saw the man from her dream—not the cold gatekeeper, but someone who had once held Evelyn while their world was still whole. Someone who had come to an unfamiliar universe carrying his anger because he didn't know what else to bring.
Then Kael said, more quietly:
“I haven't decided yet.”
The shadow in the window pierced the glass.
Kael moved faster than Liora could see. He pulled her behind him, then raised his hand. A wall of blue light exploded between them and the creature. The impact shook the entire apartment.
For the first time, Liora saw blood trickling from the corner of Kael's mouth.
He glanced over his shoulder.
“If you want to stay alive, don't let go of my hand.”
“I don't trust you.”
“Good.” Kael held out his hand. “I don't trust you either.”
The creature behind the barrier growled. The blue light began to fracture.
Liora looked at Kael's hand, then at the pendant on the table. In the photograph, Evelyn smiled as if she knew something no one else did.
Something that might have been waiting for Liora ever since she first dreamed of the burning city.
She took Kael's hand.
The world collapsed into light.
And just before everything vanished, Liora heard a woman's voice whisper in her ear from inside the pendant:
“Don't let him remember who I am.”