Phoenix sat on the edge of his bed, palms pressed to his eyes until colors pulsed in the darkness. The roar that had torn across the sky still vibrated in his bones. He could see it when he blinked—the sweep of silver wings, sunlight running along scales like water over steel.
A dragon.
He lowered his hands. The villa smelled the same—old wood and last night's rain—but the world beyond the balcony doors didn't. He rose, feet whispering across the floor, and pulled the curtains wider.
Glass and stone split the horizon into two histories. Skyscrapers climbed with mirrored faces; beside them, ancient towers flew banners that snapped in the breeze. Hovercars glided on blue rails while horse-drawn carts rattled over cobbles directly beneath them. High above, a floating isle hung like a cliff sawn from a mountain and nailed to the sky.
Phoenix braced a hand on the window frame. Cold slid into his skin. "This isn't my world," he breathed.
Knuckles on the front door—three light taps.
He flinched, then exhaled and forced his shoulders down. The door opened without waiting.
"Phoenix? You awake?" Athena's voice carried easily through the hall.
She stepped inside with a wicker basket tucked against her hip. Light-blue blouse, cream skirt, an apron tied hastily over both. Her long chestnut hair was braided over one shoulder, a few wisps caught in the morning glow. She gave him the soft smile that had steadied him more times than he could count.
"You look… extremely awake," she said, amused. "Like someone who forgot sleep exists."
Phoenix wanted to blurt a dragon just flew over my house. His throat worked soundlessly. He swallowed and found a safer line. "Did… did you see it?"
"See what?" She set the basket on the dining table and began unpacking neatly wrapped containers. Warm rice and miso drifted out, fragrant and familiar.
"The dragon," he said, voice cracking despite himself. "Silver. Big as a building. It— it flew right over us."
Athena paused, chopsticks in hand. A laugh slipped out, not unkind. She glanced toward the window as if indulging him. "Oh, that. Eastern garrison patrol beast. They pass every few days." She cocked her head at him. "You really missed that?"
Patrol beast. Every few days.
Phoenix found the chair with the back of his knee and sat. "Right," he said, but the word was air.
She came over, nudged him with her elbow. "Hey. Sit properly before you fold in half." The apron's tie rode slightly off-center on her waist; the detail snagged his attention absurdly, an anchor in a sea of wrongness. She slid a bowl toward him, ladled steaming soup, and poured tea until the steam curled around his fingers.
"Eat while it's hot," she said. "Bad dreams don't go away if you starve them."
He managed a breath that could almost pass for a laugh. "Is that medical advice?"
"Neighbor advice," Athena said primly. "Very scientific."
He lifted his chopsticks. The first mouthful of rice was simple and perfect. Heat, salt, the slight sweetness of the egg. Real. Ordinary. He felt his stomach unclench a fraction, enough for the world to slide into focus around the edges.
Athena watched him, cheek in palm, eyes bright. "Better?"
"Getting there," he said. The food soothed his hands but not the churn under his ribs. Guilt surfaced like a shape beneath dark water—Athena's scream, soldiers' boots on tile, glass shattering. He forced the images back down. Not this time.
"You're staring like I've sprouted a halo," Athena said lightly. "I'm just feeding you, not performing a miracle."
"Sorry." He cleared his throat. "It's… a weird morning."
She leaned closer, lowering her voice. "You mean weirder than you forgetting to lock your door again?"
He blinked. "…I did not."
Athena raised a brow. "We'll pretend you didn't."
A nervous laugh escaped him. The tiny normality of it steadied his hands more than the tea. They ate in companionable quiet for a few breaths, the clink of porcelain and distant city noise weaving a blanket over the room—hovercar hum, street vendors calling, the iron chime of distant bells.
He risked a glance through the balcony doors. The floating isle threw a moving shadow as clouds crossed the sun. A pair of armored riders thundered along the old road on massive beasts that weren't horses. A neon billboard flickered to a different ad midair, selling charms blessed by some ministry he didn't recognize.
"Phoenix?" Athena's tone softened. "You've been… somewhere else these past few days."
He gripped his chopsticks. Past few days. For her, this had always been the world. For him, this morning was a cliff he'd been shoved over.
"I'm fine," he said, then amended, "Or I will be. Thank you for breakfast."
"Mm. I'll take that as feed him and he revives." She tapped his bowl with her chopsticks, mock-stern. "Eat. Hypothetical dragons can wait."
"They're not—" He stopped. She wouldn't understand that for him, they were anything but hypothetical.
The television on the counter cut from ads to an emergency banner. A live shot shook as the camera operator zoomed on a cathedral whose stained glass lay glittering across stone like spilled jewels. Smoke curled from the broken windows.
The anchor's voice wavered. "An unidentified celestial anomaly has been sighted above the capital district. Authorities request calm while investigation is underway." The feed cut to a replay: light shearing across the sky, then fragments falling like black feathers.
Phoenix's breath failed. His grip tightened until his fingers ached. The shape of the falling dark was burned into him from another life.
Athena followed his gaze. "Oh," she said, as if remembering something mundane. "Those zealots again. Ever since the last eclipse, they keep staging nonsense."
"Nonsense," he echoed, his voice distant in his own ears.
He knew the sequence. In the last timeline, the first omen had been written off as theatrics. The cult's pageantry grew, then its miracles sharpened into knives. The feathers weren't props. They were warnings.
He set his chopsticks down carefully so they wouldn't rattle and give away the tremor in his hands.
Athena, oblivious to the storm inside him, refilled his tea. "You're very quiet. Either you hate my cooking or you're plotting the downfall of something."
"Your cooking is perfect," he said, truthfully. He looked at her—the familiar tilt of her smile, the calm that lived in her posture—and felt that guilt surge again, then transform into something cleaner, harder. Resolve slid into its place.
She wagged a finger. "Then chew. You can panic about apocalyptic headlines after breakfast."
"That's what I'm worried about," he muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing." He took another sip of soup, let the warmth unfurl through cold places. There would be time soon for choices and risks and fights. For now, she was safe in his kitchen and the morning still pretended to be gentle.
Athena rose, gathering empty wrappers into the basket. "I'll leave these here in case you want seconds." She hesitated, then reached to smooth an imaginary crease from his sleeve. "If you feel… off, come next door. I'll be in until noon."
The touch lasted a heartbeat, the kind that could be explained away as habit. Phoenix held himself very still, like any sudden move might scatter the moment's fragile pieces.
"Thank you," he said. Two words, heavy with everything he couldn't afford to tell her yet.
"Anytime." She lifted the basket and headed for the door, pausing to look back with a teasing eye-roll. "And lock this after me. Patrol beasts don't care about your front door, but people do."
"I will," he said.
When the door clicked shut, quiet swelled, fuller than before, as if the villa exhaled. Phoenix carried his bowl to the sink, set it down, and braced both hands on the counter. The emergency banner rolled again. The cathedral. The falling dark. The first domino had tipped.
He closed his eyes. Memory flooded—streets lit by burning cars, sirens swallowed by the crowd's roar, the villa's walls vibrating under boots. The taste of blood. Athena's voice breaking.
Not again.
He rinsed the bowl with steady, deliberate motions and dried his hands. Then he crossed the living room and dragged open an old cabinet. Dust rose in a thin veil. Inside lay leftovers from a life that hadn't ended—maps, notebooks, a cheap field compass that had gone out of fashion a decade ago. He set them on the table one by one.
The calendar pinned to the wall read 2025.
He'd been given six years before the world broke the way he remembered. Maybe less—this world didn't follow exactly. Things had merged and shifted. But enough patterns held that he could feel the shape of what was coming.
Phoenix sank into the chair and pulled a notebook toward him. The cover was cracked; the first page was blank. He wrote the date. His handwriting steadied as the pen moved. He listed what he knew. He listed what he didn't. He underlined a name he had never spoken aloud since waking: Zariel.
He heard the dragon before he saw it, a distant roll that tightened the glass in its frame. Phoenix rose and stepped onto the balcony. The sky was painfully blue. The city sprawled in its impossible mixture of centuries. People were ants from this height, moving as if nothing irreversible had shifted.
A silver arc crossed the heavens, majestic and indifferent.
Phoenix watched it pass, jaw set. He wasn't the boy who died behind a locked door. He was a man with another chance and a world that pretended to be normal. He could pretend along with it—for a few more breaths.
His phone vibrated where it lay near the tea. A neighborhood alert scrolled across the screen: City Advisory: Increased patrol activity in eastern airspace due to reported anomalies. Maintain routine. Avoid cathedral district until further notice.
Maintain routine.
He breathed out a humorless sound. "Sure."
He stepped back inside and locked the door because Athena had told him to. He cleaned the table, lined the bowls just so, slid the tea back onto the warmer. He did the small, ordinary things that made the villa look lived-in. Then he returned to the notebook and drew a small star beside the cathedral's name.
The television murmured. The city moved. Somewhere, banners were being raised for a ceremony no one understood.
Athena would check on him again by noon; she always did. He would smile more convincingly then. He would ask about her day and pretend his heart wasn't a clenched fist around a memory.
For now, he wrote. Lines and arrows. Questions and anchors. He shaped a plan from nothing, because the alternative was to wait and drown.
When the news looped to the slow-motion replay, Phoenix paused his pen and watched the black fragments fall. The camera stuttered trying to hold focus as the pieces drifted like burnt feathers.
He didn't whisper the name this time. He didn't need to.
Arc One had begun.