Eighteen-year-old Novera has spent her life learning that nothing lasts forever—not health, not hope, and certainly not time. With each hospital visit, each doctor's worried glance, she's watched her world shrink to the size of a hospital room. But her adopted brother has always been her anchor, the one person who made her believe she was more than her illness.Then he disappears.What starts as a frantic search through empty streets and abandoned places quickly becomes something she never expected. The few clues Novera finds make no sense—strange symbols carved into walls, witnesses who swear they saw him in two places at once, security footage that flickers and distorts whenever his image appears. Nothing about his disappearance follows the rules of the ordinary world she thought she knew.With her illness advancing and her strength failing, Novera should be focusing on her own survival. Instead, she finds herself drawn deeper into a mystery that defies explanation. The trail leads to forgotten corners of the city, to places that seem to exist in the spaces between what's real and what's possible.But every answer she uncovers only raises more disturbing questions. Why won't anyone speak his name? What do the strange marks appearing throughout the city mean? And why does she feel like something is watching her from the shadows, waiting for her to discover a truth she might not be ready to face?Her brother was hiding something—something that changes everything she thought she knew about him, about herself, and about the world they shared. Now Novera must decide how far she's willing to go to find him, and what she's prepared to sacrifice to bring him home.Some mysteries demand everything you have to give. And some bonds are tested in places where light itself begins to fade