Zixuan dreams of it now—thread-thin fissures spiderwebbing across her reflection in the lake, her face cracking into a thousand versions of herself, each mouthing different fates. One screams. One weeps. One smiles with teeth not hers. She wakes with blood in her mouth, the taste of rust and ink.
Cecilion, too, is unraveling. His dreams are filled with pages—blank at first, then scrawled with frantic handwriting that mimics his own. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Each time he tries to tear the page, it regenerates. The script changes languages, then symbols, then sounds he doesn't recognize—until it begins whispering.
And one night, it answers him aloud.
"You didn't sever me. You sealed me with silence."
He wakes soaked in sweat. The inn feels colder. Quieter. Wrong.
**
On the seventh night, the baker's son goes missing.
