It’s my heart. My beast-heart. Where a girl’s heart is supposed to sit there’s a red, open animal instead, panting and wild.

I used to live in that heart full-time. Briars for a crown, dirt under my nails, my grin too close to a snarl. I slept in beds of branches and blackberries, woke up with leaves in my hair, howled until the moon felt personally attacked. If something bled near me, I wanted to know why. If something hunted, I wanted to hunt with it.

When I followed Wren into the woods, I did not just leave Juniper hanging from that tree. I let my mother go too—the version of her who scurried instead of striding, who tried to make my life so safe it shrank to the size of her fear. I let her fade into the stories Wren told about the dead. I told myself I was being brave. I told myself I was being cruel. Both felt the same.

Wren approved of my name from the start.

For three years, until my fourteenth birthday, under hard, bright stars, I did nothing but serve her. I swept the hut. I scrubbed her tub. I sorted jars of dried leaves and teeth and iron filings. I leaned what each smell meant.

When the moon thinned to a sharp little sickle, she sent me to hunt the edges of her world—bow in hand, quiver I’d carved myself, feet callused by thorns and cold stone. I came back with rabbits, with fish, with strange things that never had names. Sometimes I came back bleeding. She never fussed. She just looked at my wounds, nodded, and told me what I did wrong.

Only in the second year did she let me sleep beside her and begin teaching me like a daughter instead of a scullery girl.

Was it a good way to raise a child, making her share a bed with a witch and a knife? Maybe not.

Wren says it one morning while she wipes a smudge from my cheek with her thumb: “I am proud of you, Koshka.” The gesture is so gentle it startles me more than any scream. Her smile cuts across her face, thin and sharp.

I want to laugh. As if I did anything special. All I did was what beasts do: I survived where I was put. I made good grades at school. I pretended my home life was normal. I studied physics, math, and mythology the way other kids studied makeup tutorials. In Wren’s forest, I learned a different kind of problem-solving. How to hear danger before it steps on a twig. How to sleep without ever really sleeping.

Under all of that lives a single, stupid hope: if I come back stronger, my father will be proud of me. If I come back alive, he will love me.

My breath stutters when Wren suddenly drags me into a hug. She smells like damp earth and candle smoke. For the first time since I’ve known her, she weeps openly, her whole frame shaking. When she pulls back, her face is wet, and my own cheeks are slick.

“How frail this human heart,” she murmurs. “It is an exit wound, Kohana. The gun, the bullet, the finger on the trigger—all in one.”

“I’m not dead yet.” I try on a small, defiant smile, sweet as a candy stolen from a shop. “Save the eulogy. I want my death to make sense when it comes. Until then, you’re stuck with me.”

She huffs, half laugh, half sob. “It is not death that worries me. It’s what you’ll do with living.”

We walk. The forest thins. The air brightens. Spring presses soft fingers against my face as we climb out of her dark world.

“You have endured all my tasks,” she says as the path curls along a cliff. Sea wind slaps my cheeks, salt on my lips. “It is a full initiation. Blossom whenever you wish, little cat.”

Wolves pad at my heels, lions and bears and leopards appearing at the edge of my vision like thoughts. They rub against me, claws sheathed, eyes bright. I scratch between ears, slip past a rare mushroom at a tree’s roots. Wren walks ahead, the hem of her black dress snagging on heather and never tearing.

“The working of fate is an eternal becoming,” she says without turning. “The thread spins, is measured, is cut. To everything that is, something is assigned. You, especially, are stitched dense with destiny.”

I grin into the wind. “I’m stronger than my thread.”

We crest the cliff. The ocean opens its mouth below, roaring. Sea pinks and wildflowers stud the grass. Spray jewels the air. I spin with my arms flung wide, laughing, dizzy on the sheer size of the sky.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“My daughter,” Wren whispers.

The word hits harder than any wave. My throat tightens; tears prick. I tell myself I’m not crying even as my vision blurs.

“For so I hope I may call you,” she continues. “Can you count grains of sand? Measure how far the sky reaches? My love runs further.” She presses a knotted hand to my chest. “You should know my heartbeat better than hers.”

She means my mother.

A rope seems to cinch around my neck. “You’ve been good to me,” I manage. “You’ve given me magic, protection, a place.”

“Then stay.” Her voice gains a raw edge. “Say you will. Stay in my forest, stay with me. Let me keep you where the world can’t chew you up.”

I open my mouth and a bird flails there, beating its wings against my teeth. Love is a stupid, heavy word. It thrashes. It doesn’t come out right.

What comes out is sobbing. Ugly, hiccuping sobs, the kind children make when they finally drop the act and let their guts show. Doesn’t love come when you fall apart? Doesn’t it move close, pry your fingers off the wound and ask where it hurts?

“I want to be loved,” I say, hoarse. “I do.”

Her breath ghosts over my face, smelling of violets left on grave-stone. “Then stay,” she says again.

I step back instead.

The cliff edge blurs. The world drops.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Falling.

Gravity, orbit, the curve of an invisible path. Breath knocks out of me and comes back as something else. I taste metal. Space. Dust older than my planet.

Somewhere beyond all this, the Aphelion waits, and with it, Hiroyuki.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

I don’t remember how I get from Wren’s cliff to the Aphelion’s steel floors. One moment I am falling through sky, the next I’m upright in a corridor that hums delicately under my feet.

My hands itch. They burn. I look down and my skin is a map of weeping blisters, as if I’ve tried to hold something too hot for too long. For a sick second, I swear I see movement under the skin—little dark commas the size of insect larvae, writhing.

I gag. My knees buckle.

I pitch forward, catching myself on something solid and warm. Hiroyuki’s back. He turns smoothly, catches me before I slide to the ground, his arms a precise frame around me.

“Kohana.” His golden eyes study my face with cool intensity. “Are you well?” Up close, he smells like old books and cold air and something sweeter beneath, like fig jam smudged on marble. “You look pale, dear.”

Behind him, memory fogs in, thicker than ship-air. My father’s silhouette forms in the mist—a tall, sharp man made of disapproval and cigarette smoke.

“I’m fine,” I say. The words scrape my throat raw. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

My father stands in the fog, arms crossed. I fed you, gave you clothes, a roof. What more do you want?

If I am not strong, I am weak. If I am weak, I am nothing.

I straighten my spine the way Wren taught me, predator-tall, chin up. I pretend my hands are not shaking.

Hiroyuki’s gaze flicks to my fingers anyway. His mouth tightens, but he doesn’t push. “Last night was a trial,” he says instead. His voice is soft, heavy cream over sharp edges. “School days are rarely gentle even without Shadows.”

He gestures and the corridor opens into a small chamber, all white and gold and humming light. “You may rest on the Aphelion for a while. I would prefer it, in truth. You require a physical examination, a psychological–”

“No.” The panic comes so fast it almost knocks me over. “I’m not— I don’t need—” I choke on the words. “I said I’m fine.”

He pauses. Something like pity moves across his face, then hides.

“As you wish,” he says quietly. “For now.”

He steps back, hands folded behind his back, an Advisor in full briefing mode. “The entity you fought was a Shadow—one of Death’s extensions. Foot soldiers, if you like.”

“I got that impression,” I mutter.

“Your planet is crawling with them.” His voice hardens. “Death is testing the boundaries. Eventually, it will not be tests. It will be an invasion. You and I alone cannot stop it.”

“And everyone else?” I lift my chin. “You’re not seriously telling me we cut our losses and bail. I won’t leave an entire world behind. I couldn’t live with myself. Better to die here than–”

“I would ask much and more of you.” There’s no threat in his tone, which somehow makes it worse. “You are not simply a girl from Earth, Kohana. You are a Summoner—a weapon the Celestial Beings designed in the All-Creator’s image. Eight of you exist. You are the Summoner of Time.”

The word hums through me. Time. Wren’s word. My word.

My power shivers under my skin like something waking.

“I already knew,” I say, trying to sound bored instead of terrified. “Or I suspected. Wren’s not exactly subtle.”

He arches a brow. “And you chose not to tell me.”

“I didn’t want to share,” I say. “My magic is mine.”

A corner of his mouth lifts. “Very well. Keep your secrets. It changes nothing. You stand outside my temporal sequence. My time can be measured. Yours cannot.”

Then his gaze deepens, goes dark at the edges. “I know Death well, Kohana,” he says. “Like a lover. Like a childhood friend I should have cut ties with centuries ago. When you walked to my ship, I felt every ant you stepped on as a pinprick in my smallest finger. Loss clings to you like perfume.”

He says it like a compliment and an apology at once.

Anger slams through me. “What do you know about being empty?” I spit. “You talk like you’ve seen everything. How does that give you the right to talk about my grief?”

My voice shakes. I hate that it shakes. “The world broke my heart and handed me the pieces,” I say. “And you want me to fix the rest of it.”

“Sometimes,” he answers, “I look at you and see a ghost crying in a hallway that has no doors.” He drops to one knee, head bowed. It’s not theatrics; I feel the weight of the bow in my ribs. “The Umbrakinetic reached you before I did. For that failure, I cannot apologise enough.”

“You keep talking like Wren is some villain out of your war reports,” I snap. “If she’d wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be standing here. You don’t know her.”

“Transmission incoming,” the Aphelion interrupts.

Hiroyuki rises in one smooth motion. “Put it through.”

A man appears in the air between us, poured across a holographic window like expensive liquor. Skin the color of aged brandy, eyebrows arched with practiced mischief, curls tumbling over one eye.

“Hey, ‘Yuki,” he drawls. His voice is honey gone a little to smoke. “You’re late. Thought you were in a hurry to see me. Guess I’ll cancel our date.”

He sees me. Pauses. Smirks. “And who’s the lost little kid?”

“Kid?” The word detonates in my chest. “Lost?” My lip curls, my glare hot enough to blister metal. “I’m almost sixteen. I know exactly where I am.”

He laughs, low and pleased. “Right. Whose almost-sixteen-year-old kid?”

“Come out of that screen and say that to my face–”

“This is the Summoner of Time, D’ivoire,” Hiroyuki cuts in. I shoot him a vicious side-eye. His expression has changed; his smile is wide and bright, eyes turned to crescents. I’ve never seen him look at anyone like that.

“She’s adorable,” D’ivoire says.

“I am not adorable!”

“Relax,” he teases. “You’ll erode my teeth with how cute you are. When you get to Spectra, we’ll see if your bark matches your bite.”

Hiroyuki’s gaze rests on me, warm. “She is no demure cabbage,” he tells D’ivoire. “No timid carbon dot. Quite the opposite.”

I open my mouth to respond—

—and trees swallow the ship.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Old growth surges up around us, trunks thick as towers, air wet and green and humming. Frogs boom from somewhere underfoot; river roar braids with the rustle of leaves. I blink and the Aphelion’s clean light is gone, replaced by a rainforest’s shadow.

“What kind of nonsense have you gotten yourself into now, girl?” Wren’s voice crawls over my skin, all gravel and lightning.

She steps out from behind a strangler fig, liminal as ever—half there, half not, hut and skull-fence and yew-tree graveyard clinging to her like shadows she forgot to wipe off.

“You shook the realms with that tantrum,” she says, squinting at me. “I felt your sorrow crack the seams between dimensions. See what happens when you don’t stay home?”

She looks past me, eyes sharpening. “And you brought me a gift.”

Her teeth flash in a grin pointed squarely at Hiroyuki. “Celestial Being. Advisor. All wrapped up and pretty, like a roast I didn’t have to season myself.”

“He’s not for you.” My voice comes out a scrape. “You can’t have him.”

“You defend food now?” She clucks her tongue. “No apology, no offerings, but you’ll body-block my dinner? Ungrateful whelp.”

Hiroyuki, infuriatingly, smiles with mild politeness. He might as well be at a diplomatic banquet.

“A bit too pretty to be an Advisor, aren’t you?” Wren goes on, circling him. “What do you know of maggot-woods and gunfire? Of girls who twitch in their sleep because the world won’t stop biting?”

“Knowing the Summoner of Time’s biography,” Hiroyuki says gently, “does not qualify you to manage her future. That is my mandate, not yours.”

The storm hits her eyes all at once. She bristles. “You’re a dog,” she snarls. “A military mutt. The Commander’s pet. Broken down and rebuilt to heel. You’d crawl across galaxies on bloody kneecaps if he whistled.”

Emotion doesn’t cross Hiroyuki’s face so much as shift in the atmosphere around him—pressure dropping, temperature cooling. “Do you know who you are, Wren?” he asks. “Have you been honest with her at all?”

She laughs, sharp and strange. “Oh, I know the story. I’ve told it to myself enough times. You think you’re living; you don’t realize the story is living you. Children howl if you change one word of a fairytale. You’re no different.”

Wren’s gaze flicks to me and softens. “I am the third,” she says quietly. “The inevitable one. Clotho spins, Lachesis measures. I cut. When we meet next, my little flower, I won’t be gentle.”

For a heartbeat, she looks almost… tired. “Oh, those poor Summoners,” she mutters, patting her own chest. “Spectra keeps stealing my children. I will not let them have you.”

She reaches for me and the world tilts again.

Hiroyuki’s hand finds her shoulder instead.

“You’re dying,” he says.

He gives the word a kindness that makes it sound like rest. Light warms the battered trunks; the skull fence seems less like a threat and more like a crowd of witnesses. Wren stares past us into something I can’t see.

“I will not let you go alone,” he adds.

Something rips in my chest.

I drop to my knees, screaming. The sound is raw, animal. It drags birds out of trees and shakes leaves loose. My heart is a single, unbroken wail.

“Save her,” I choke. “Please. Hiroyuki. Save Wren.”

“Quiet, girl,” Wren snaps, brows lifting. Shame scorches my face. I stare at the ground.

“When have you ever known me to need saving?” she demands. Then—almost grudgingly—she smiles, real and fond. “He walks nicely for a godling,” she tells me, eyes on Hiroyuki. “Glides. And those eyes… You chose well.”

Her hand lands on my head, stroking my hair back. My breathing knots.

“He is a fine Advisor,” she says.

The sky eats their voices. Stars swallow sound. My hands clamp over my ears. My bones shake apart.

Darkness pushes in. Something begins to write itself in the smoke.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

A woman unfolds from shadow like a page.

Wide black hat, cigarette holder, smoke spilling out in galaxies. Behind her, cats recline on every surface—tigers, lynxes, panthers, leopards, all lazy muscle and sharp teeth.

“Hello, kitty cat,” she says.

Her eyes are my eyes, slit and bright. Her hair is a storm of violet curls. Her clothes glitter like spilled oil: vinyl pants, fur collar, corset tight enough to crush planets.

“Kohana?” I whisper. My own name tastes strange in my mouth. Heavy. Sharp.

She smiles and the universe rearranges itself a little to make room. “You called,” she says, drawing on her pipe. Stars spin in the plume.

“I don’t… feel human anymore,” I admit. Tears burn their way out. “What am I supposed to do with all of this? All this loss?”

“Come here,” she says. It isn’t a request.

I go. Of course I go.

Up close, she is beautiful in a way that hurts to look at. I want to impress her. I want to hit her. I want her to tell me I’m doing everything right.

“Hiroyuki is many things,” she says, lip curling. “Most of them irritating. But he isn’t a liar. You are the Summoner of Time. Your job is to hunt Death and look it in the eye. No blinking. No flinching. That’s what you were born for.”

I throw my anger at her, childish and huge. “I don’t even get my life,” I say. “And you want my death too? You expect me to be a martyr and smile about it? I’m supposed to save everyone. Who saves me?”

Her voice cools, hardens. “Think about how many doctors are buried under their patients,” she says. “How many ‘heroes’ die with blood on their hands. Everyone is ephemeral. That includes you.” Her gaze cuts. “You worship heroes so loudly you can’t hear your own power.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a kid–”

Her hand cracks across my face. Blood blooms on my lip. Her cheetah yawns, unconcerned.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she asks, voice like cold iron. “I am you, little one. Just later.”

I press fabric to my mouth, swallowing the retort that wants to leap out.

She huffs. “Watch.”

She grabs my hands.

The air screams.

Between our palms, reality warps, the way heat warps the air above a road. Sound knives through my skull. When I rip my hands free, my ears are wet. It takes a second to realize it’s blood.

“You are fifteen,” she says pleasantly. “I’m nearly forty. Another version of you. Proof you don’t end here.”

I stare at her, half furious, half afraid. “You could have just told me.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” She strokes a leopard’s back; it purrs like an engine. “Listen. The Drakoryae—old, smug universes who think they run things—call beings like you ‘Universe Shapers.’ You warp reality as easily as other creatures breathe. You’re also what they label a ‘Multiverse Constant.’ Pull you out, and the whole tapestry frays.”

“So you’re here to… save me?” I ask.

“If it were up to me, I’d be in my own bed with Alpha,” she says dryly. “You yanked me out. Poof. Now my god-king is wondering where his Summoner went.” She sighs. “But since I’m here, and since cats are patient, I’ll make you a deal. If you want to live, think of everything bad that has ever happened to you.”

“Why would I want to—”

“Think,” she says.

I do.

The scream tears out of me from somewhere so deep I don’t know how it fits inside one body. Crows burst from my mouth in a flood—thousands of black wings, a storm of feathers and sound. Branches twist around me, snapping, forming a cage of dead wood. Light bends. I can feel myself collapsing inward, gravity gone wrong.

Far away, through the noise, I hear Wren’s voice, amused and cruel. “See, Advisor? Have you ever watched an epilogue arrive as a prologue?”

The world buckles.

Something pushes through my skull from the inside—a hand made of pitch and teeth, forcing itself out through my eye socket. I shriek; the pain is white and endless.

“This Shadow is my masterpiece,” Wren says calmly. “Ananke, after my mother. The necessity under everything. Woven from your Summoner’s dread, her despair, her hunger.”

Death drags itself out of me. Taller than trees. Faces sliding over its surface like oil. It leaves my empty socket weeping black.

Wren walks toward it with her arms open.

“Men aren’t built to be gods,” she tells the thing. “They choke on the universe when they try to swallow it. You, little monster, are what spills back out.”

Ananke grasps her in one vast, dripping hand.

“Fate is three women,” Wren calls, her voice already distant. “Young, cruel, and brave. Middle, bitter and sharp. Old, grey and laughing. They turn into hounds when they work, teeth on the strands.”

She laughs once—bright, broken. “We are those wolves, Kohana. You, me, Juniper. Running the circle.”

The Shadow squeezes. Something in her gives. She hits the ground in a ruined heap.

I cling to Hiroyuki, soaking his sleeves with blood and tears. Sound leaves my body in wild bursts—screams, sobs, then something worse.

My laughter comes without my permission. High, hysterical, jagged. I hear it and don’t recognize it as mine.

I laugh and laugh and laugh while the Shadow vomits black and the world tries not to end.