Chapter 31 · The Last Note

The second string screamed.

Marcus didn't let go. His palm burned where the fragment bit into skin, but the resonance was already spreading through the shop floor. Cassian's hand locked around his wrist, not pulling anymore, just holding on like they were both about to fall off the edge of something.

The light coming up through the cracks wasn't ice-blue now. It was every color Marcus had seen die. Rust-orange from the steampunk ruin. Bone-white from the ice plains. The sick green shimmer of the glass bridge world right before it shattered under his weight.

"You don't know what you just did," Cassian said. His voice was flat. Empty.

Marcus looked at him. Cassian's face was gray, the kind of gray that came after too many nights awake, too many loops, too many deaths that weren't supposed to stick but did anyway in all the ways that mattered.

"I know exactly what I did," Marcus said. "I'm fixing it."

"Fixing." Cassian laughed, and it sounded like something breaking. "You triggered the resonance lock. Every world you touched is waking up at the same time. You think that's fixing?"

The floor shook. Not like an earthquake.