The smoke always hit first.

  Caelum covered his mouth with his sleeve as the city came into view. The chimneys lined the horizon like jagged teeth, pouring ash into the morning sky. The same buildings, the same rail lines, the same cracked stones.

  It should’ve been comforting.

  It wasn’t.

  Jonas walked a few steps ahead, eyes on the road, expression unreadable. Orrin wandered behind them, occasionally stopping to talk to the air or argue with a bird that wasn’t there. Caelum didn’t ask what he was mumbling about. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  The gates were open. No one stopped them. Two guards sat on crates under the stone arch, dice rattling in a wooden cup. Neither looked up. Another leaned against the wall, dozing upright, his musket balanced across his lap.

  Inside, Metoria breathed like a living machine. Wheels turning. Gears grinding. Everything moved—carts, people, steamlines, conversation. Heat pressed down from above, rising off metal roofs and pavement. The air smelled like coal, oil, and bread.

  A street vendor barked out the price of onions in one breath and yelled at a goat in the next.

  Nothing had changed.

  That was the strangest part.

  Jonas slowed his pace. They passed an ironworks that looked exactly the same as when they’d left. The same scorch marks. The same cracked window. The same man behind the fence hammering out a blade like he’d never taken a break.

  “Looks like it survived without us,” Jonas said.

  “It was never ours,” Caelum said quietly.

  Jonas turned off down a side street without another word.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Caelum kept walking.

  He turned onto Bellman's Row and passed by the old gaslight that always hissed at the wrong time of day. It still did. A loose grate rattled under his boots, and a stray cat jumped from a barrel, hissing before disappearing between buildings.

  He didn’t feel like he belonged here.

  That feeling hadn’t been there before. He’d spent his whole life walking these streets—running errands, getting chewed out by shopkeepers, watching apprentices show off spells they barely controlled.

  Now the noise felt distant, like a stage play behind thick glass.

  The city didn’t notice him. Didn’t miss him. It just kept turning.

  A boy dragged a cart across the street, its axle screeching with every rotation. Caelum stepped aside, letting it pass without thinking. The boy didn’t acknowledge him.

  That used to be him.

  He stopped in front of a wall covered in posters. Most were torn or faded. One announced a clockwork job fair. Another warned about “unsanctioned enchantments in residential zones.” A third offered a bounty for “rogue familiars” last seen near the river.

  He read them all twice, then moved on.

  When he reached the plaza, the noise doubled. Market stalls. Shouting. Sizzling pans. Clattering wagons. Orrin stood by a statue, lecturing it about improper rune spacing.

  Caelum passed him and didn’t interrupt.

  He turned down a narrow lane that wound between brick buildings and overhangs, his boots echoing off the walls. Pigeons scattered from the rooftop as he emerged into a quieter stretch of road.

  Then he saw it.

  The bakery.

  It was smaller than he remembered. Older. The door had a new handle. The glass in the window was still foggy from the ovens inside.

  A woman stepped out, a loaf under her arm, humming something Caelum didn’t recognize.

  He stood across the street, still, hands in his coat pockets.

  The bakery didn’t care that he’d been gone. The bricks didn’t lean differently. The sign didn’t swing with new purpose. But something inside him shifted just looking at it.

  He took a breath, but it didn’t help.

  A memory pushed in: sitting at the counter with flour on his shirt, Daya slapping his hand away from an unfinished tray of sweetbread. The heat from the oven. The sound of her scolding him for trying to “help.”

  He hadn’t thought about that day in months.

  Now it was the only thing he could think about.

  The door opened again.

  For a moment, he thought it would be her.

  It wasn’t.

  Another customer stepped out. The door swung shut behind them with the same low creak it had always made.

  He crossed the street. Stopped just short of the door. His hand hovered near the handle.

  Then he stepped back and leaned against the wall.

  He wasn’t ready yet.