Chapter 29 · Seven Skies, One Shop

The ceiling cracked first. Not a little crack. The kind that splits brick and makes you think about load-bearing walls and whether your landlord's insurance covers dimensional rupture.

Marcus barely got his hands up before plaster dust rained down on the workbench. The lyre shard in his palm went hot. Then cold. Then it started singing, a low hum that made his teeth ache.

Above him, the crack widened. Not into his neighbor's apartment. Into sky.

Seven skies.

He could see them all at once, layered wrong, like someone had stacked postcards from seven different worlds and then torn the stack in half. There was the steampunk ruin he'd died in first, all rust and amber fog. The ice plains where Ayla's tribe had pressed runes into frozen ground. A jungle canopy he didn't recognize, glowing violet.

A city of black glass. A desert made of broken mirrors. Two more he couldn't process because his brain was too busy screaming.

The shop groaned. His tools rattled off their hooks.

"No," Marcus said. Just that. Like it would help.

The first string was still ringing.