Kade woke to the smell of rain and burnt metal.
The rooftop was quiet. Too quiet.
The last thing he remembered was her voice — “Took you long enough.”
Now Asha lay beside him, rainwater pooling in her hair, her lips parted like she had fallen asleep mid-sentence.
But she wasn’t breathing.
Kade sat up so fast his head spun.
The Drag still burned in his veins, that cursed heat twisting beneath his skin, restless and alive. His heartbeat was too loud, every throb of it echoed by the mirror-fractures still clinging inside him. Eight versions of himself whispering, laughing, judging — their voices overlapping in his skull.
> “She’s not real.”
“You dragged her back, idiot.”
“Maybe you dragged something else.”
He ignored them, pressing his ear to her chest. Nothing. No heartbeat. No
