The journey took three days.

  Or what Emre guessed were days. The sun—if it could be called that—hung motionless in the violet sky, neither rising nor setting, simply existing as a fixed point of pale gold that cast long, unchanging shadows. Time became a matter of endurance rather than measurement. They walked until exhaustion forced them to stop, slept until their bodies demanded movement, ate the strange but edible fruits Maya found growing on low, silver-leaved bushes.

  The landscape changed as they traveled. The grassy plain gave way to rolling hills of something that looked like purple moss but crunched underfoot like dried leaves. Those gave way to a forest of crystalline trees that sang when the wind passed through them—an eerie, beautiful music that seemed to resonate in Emre's bones and made the figurine pulse with sympathetic light.

  They avoided the forest, skirting its edges after Maya reported feeling "watched" from within. Emre didn't question her instincts. In this world, instinct might be the only reliable guide.

  On the second day, they saw their first native inhabitants.

  A herd of creatures that resembled deer, if deer had six legs and fur that shifted color with their movements, crossed their path about a kilometer ahead. Emre froze, pulling Maya behind a rock outcropping, but the creatures simply glanced in their direction with mild curiosity and continued on their way.

  "Not everything here wants to kill us," Maya whispered.

  "Yet."

  She smiled grimly. "Yet."

  On the third day, the city resolved from distant impossibility to approaching reality.

  Last Hold was exactly what Voice had described: a city built into the bones of something immense. As they drew closer, Emre could make out the structure more clearly. The bones were fossilized now, turned to something like stone over eons, but their origin was unmistakable. Ribs curved overhead like the arches of a cathedral, so vast that clouds formed and dissipated between them. A spine rose in the distance, each vertebra the size of a mountain. And nestled in the hollows, tucked between the curves of this dead leviathan, were buildings—thousands of them, constructed from the same bone-stone, connected by bridges and staircases and platforms that defied every law of physics Emre had ever learned.

  "It's a city," Maya breathed. "Inside a dead god."

  "Apparently." Emre's voice was calm, but his mind was racing, cataloging, analyzing. The scale was impossible. The architecture was impossible. Everything about this place was impossible.

  And yet here they were.

  They approached the city's edge—not a wall or gate, but simply a point where the bone-stone gave way to a massive arch, clearly carved, clearly entrance. Figures moved in the shadows beneath it.

  "Wait." Maya grabbed his arm. "We don't know who they are. We don't know the rules. We can't just walk in."

  "You have a better idea?"

  She hesitated. "No. But we should be careful. Watch everything. Say nothing about why we're really here."

  Emre nodded. It was sound advice. He'd spent his life observing systems before attempting to modify them. This was no different.

  They walked toward the arch.

  ---

  The figures beneath it resolved into people.

  Or humanoids, at least. They stood on two legs, had two arms, one head—the basic template. But their skin had a faint blue tint, and their eyes were large and dark, and their ears tapered to delicate points. They wore uniforms of deep green, and they carried weapons that looked like a cross between spears and something technological—glowing crystals set into metal shafts.

  Guards. Or sentinels. Or the local equivalent of border control.

  One of them stepped forward as Emre and Maya approached. Its expression was unreadable, but its hand rested on its weapon in a gesture that translated across any species.

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  "Halt. State your origin and purpose."

  The voice was female, or feminine-presenting, with an accent Emre couldn't place. The language was... unexpected. It wasn't English, wasn't Turkish, wasn't anything he'd ever heard. But he understood it. Perfectly.

  The Nexus provides, a thought whispered. Translation is fundamental.

  "We're travelers," he said, hoping the translation worked both ways. "We came through a—a tear. A Glitch. We're looking for someone."

  The guard's eyes narrowed. "Glitch-travelers. Rare. Dangerous. Often both." She studied them with an intensity that made Emre's skin crawl. "You bear the Echo-touch. I can sense it. What are you to the Echo?"

  "I don't know what that means."

  "The Echo. The soul-light. The stolen goddess. What are you to her?"

  Emre's heart stuttered. "She's—the woman I love. She was taken. I came to find her."

  Something shifted in the guard's expression. Recognition? Sympathy? Wariness?

  "Love," she repeated, as if tasting an unfamiliar word. "Love for the Echo. That is... new." She stepped aside, gesturing toward the arch. "Pass. But be warned—Last Hold is not kind to strangers. And there are those within who would pay dearly for news of a Glitch-traveler who seeks the Echo."

  "Who?"

  The guard's lips curved in something that might have been a smile. "Everyone. The question is whether they want to help you or use you. Or eat you. In the Nexus, these are not mutually exclusive."

  She turned and walked back to her post, leaving Emre and Maya standing at the threshold of a city built into a god's corpse.

  ---

  Last Hold was chaos.

  Beautiful, terrifying, overwhelming chaos.

  The streets—if they could be called that—were narrow passages carved through bone, winding and twisting and doubling back on themselves in ways that seemed designed to disorient. Buildings clung to every surface, stacked and layered and suspended, connected by bridges so thin they seemed impossible. Light came from glowing crystals embedded in the bone-walls, casting long shadows that moved as if alive.

  And the people.

  Emre had never seen so many different kinds of beings in one place. Blue-skinned like the guards. Green-skinned. Fur-covered. Feathered. Some that seemed to be made of light, their forms shifting and unstable. Some that were clearly mechanical, gears visible through gaps in their artificial skin. Some that he couldn't categorize at all—beings that existed in more than three dimensions, their edges bleeding into spaces that shouldn't exist.

  He and Maya moved through the crowds carefully, keeping close, saying nothing. Every face that turned toward them was a potential threat. Every glance could be a predator sizing up prey.

  "We need to find Kaelen," Maya murmured. "But we have no idea what he looks like. Or where to find him. Or how to even ask without attracting attention."

  Emre was thinking. The city was a system—complex, chaotic, but still a system. Systems had patterns. Patterns could be read.

  He closed his eyes and let the background process rise.

  For a moment, just a moment, he saw it. The city as code. The flow of people as data streams. The buildings as functions. The bridges as connections. And somewhere in that vast architecture, a point of instability—a fracture, a flaw, a place where the pattern broke.

  Kaelen. The Fracture.

  His eyes snapped open.

  "This way."

  He grabbed Maya's hand and pulled her through the crowd, following a route that made no sense to his conscious mind but felt inevitable to something deeper. Left, right, up a winding stair, across a bridge so narrow they had to press against the wall to let a group of fur-covered creatures pass, down into a lower level where the light was dimmer and the crowds thinner and the air smelled of something sharp and metallic.

  The fracture was close now. He could feel it.

  They emerged into a small courtyard—a pocket of space where three bone-buildings met, creating a rough circle open to the sky. In the center, sitting on a carved bench, was a figure.

  Human. Male. Young—maybe mid-twenties. Dark hair, tangled and unkempt. Dark eyes that watched them approach with an expression that mixed suspicion, exhaustion, and something else. Something that might have been hope.

  He wore Mando robes. Emre recognized the style from Joran's files—deep purple, subtly patterned, unmistakable.

  "You're Kaelen," Emre said. It wasn't a question.

  The young man's eyes widened. "How do you know that name?"

  "Voice sent us. Said you'd guide us. Or betray us. Or both."

  Kaelen laughed—a bitter, broken sound. "Voice. Of course. Always with the cryptic messages, the impossible choices." He stood, and Emre saw that he was taller than he'd seemed, with the lean build of someone who'd been living hard and eating poorly. "You're Glitch-travelers. I can smell it on you. The wrongness. The not-belonging."

  "We came through the tear. Three days ago. Looking for someone."

  "The Echo." Kaelen's voice was flat. "Everyone's looking for the Echo. The Mando want her. The God Butchers want her. Half the factions in the Nexus want her. And now two Glitch-travelers show up, asking for help, carrying her scent." He shook his head. "You're either the stupidest beings in existence or the most desperate."

  "Both," Maya said quietly. "Definitely both."

  Kaelen looked at her—really looked, for the first time—and something in his expression shifted. Softened, almost.

  "How old are you?" he asked.

  "Nineteen. Twenty, maybe. I'm not sure anymore."

  "I was seventeen when they recruited me. Seventeen when I first put on these robes and believed I was saving the world." He looked down at his hands. "Seventeen when I learned the truth."

  "What truth?" Emre asked.

  Kaelen met his eyes. "That the Mando don't protect the Nexus. They control it. They find people with power—souls that resonate with the old gods, the dead gods, the gods that were before—and they take them. They keep them. They use them." His voice hardened. "The Echo—Sulley, you call her—she's the most powerful they've ever found. The reincarnation of Aya herself. They're not keeping her prisoner because they want to hurt her. They're keeping her because they want to become her."

  The words landed like physical blows. Emre felt them in his chest, in his throat, in the sudden tightness of his jaw.

  "Where is she?"

  "Impossible to reach. The Spire of Echoes floats above the Mando homeland, guarded by magic, by soldiers, by traps that would kill you a thousand ways before you got within sight of her cell." Kaelen paused. "But I know someone who might help. Someone who hates the Mando almost as much as I do."

  "Who?"

  "A woman. A sorceress. Former Mando, like me, but older, more powerful, more dangerous. She tried to stop them once. Failed. Now she lives in exile, waiting for someone desperate enough to try again." He looked at Emre. "Her name is Yollet. And she will either save you or destroy you."

  Emre remembered the name. Joran's files. Yollet, the Echo Weaver. The one who had started all of this.

  "Where do we find her?"

  Kaelen smiled—a thin, dangerous expression.

  "That's the problem. She doesn't want to be found. And the path to her goes through places where the God Butchers hunt." He looked at Maya, then back at Emre. "Are you sure about this? Once you start, there's no going back. The Mando will know. The God Butchers will smell you. Everyone in the Nexus will have a reason to want you dead."

  Emre thought of Sulley. Of her face in that last moment. Of the life they'd planned.

  "I've been sure since the moment she disappeared."

  Kaelen studied him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.

  "Then I'll guide you. For now. We'll see how long we both survive." He extended his hand. "Welcome to the Nexus, Glitch-travelers. Try not to die too quickly. It's boring when allies die quickly."

  Emre took his hand.

  The grip was firm, the eye contact steady. Whatever Kaelen was—guide, betrayer, both—he was committed now.

  And somewhere, in a fortress of impossible height, Sulley felt a shift in the air, a change in the pattern, and smiled.

  He was coming.