The door to the picturesque suburban home was unlocked. It swung open with a soft, inviting creak, revealing a dark hallway that was a perfect, sterile replica of the one we'd just left. But it was cold. A deep, bone-chilling cold that seeped into my shoes, a cold that had nothing to do with temperature.

My breath fogged, even though there was no air to condense it. The walls glimmered faintly, like a photograph printed on glass. Each step echoed wrong - no delay, no depth. Just sound folding in on itself, as if the hallway were swallowing the noise.

Elio's cane clicked once against the tile, and the world rippled. A faint vibration hummed through the floor, spreading like a pulse through veins of invisible circuitry.

And then, the room vanished.

Instead, we found ourselves in a large, mechanical room that looked like it came straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

I gaped as a replica of the pink-haired Magical Girl Jenny had transformed into stood defiantly, frozen in time in front of a woman in black robes cackling at an open rift that bled light like molten gold. The edges of the tear shimmered, distorting everything nearby into a kaleidoscope of colorless glass. I could feel the scream of it - the wrongness clawing at the inside of my skull, as if the world itself hated being open this way.

"What is this?" Su Yin breathed, her gaze darting between the frozen figures.

I furrowed my brows, taking in the scene in front of me.

A dozen combatants were scattered around the room, all caught in a silent tableau of battle. And it wasn't just Magical Girls. It looked like a scene out of a comic book or a video game - a pair of armored knights with glowing swords, a squad of men in strange sci-fi armor, even a man in a trench coat with a wide-brimmed hat that looked like it came straight out of a noir film.

Elio tapped his cane on the ground, sighing softly, like the breath had been waiting fifteen years to escape.

"This was the end," he said.

Not to us -— just to the air, like a man reading a gravestone aloud.

The stillness fractured.

A low hum built from the floor upward, a sound that carried memory instead of tone. The frozen figures moved.

The pink-haired magical girl stepped forward, her wand raised, eyes lit with desperate resolve. The air trembled with her radiance. Across from her, the woman in black stood atop a platform of hovering stone and machinery, her staff leveled at the below. The orange light spilling from it refracted through tears in space, painting her face in jagged awful brilliance. She was a tall, blonde European woman with a cruel smile that seemed to freeze the air around her.

"Your world is dying," she hissed, her voice a hollow echo of triumph. "But mine will endure. Through me, it will endure! And be born anew!"

A towering, fifteen foot tall man made of metal clashed with a young adult man in a martial artist's gi with a dragon tattoo on his face in the background. But my eyes were drawn to the woman who stood beside the pink-haired Magical Girl, a living star against the encroaching void. She was tall and athletic, with an aura of serene, dangerous calm. Her hair was the color of a midnight sky, a cascade of deep indigo woven with tiny, shimmering motes of light that pulsed like galaxies.

The scene played out in a silent, terrible ballet.

Jenny's spell—a barrage of glowing hearts—shot forward, only to splinter against a wall of writhing, pixelated red energy. The woman in black laughed, a silent, chilling gesture, and raised her staff. She thrust out her hand. A wave of searing molten gold swept outward, smashing through the front lines of the assembled heroes. One of the armored men jumped, taking the blast head on with a heroic shout. He screamed defiantly as runes on his armor flickered and died, melting away like wax as he vanished in a spray of molten pixels.

But the woman in blue didn't even flinch.

She moved with a liquid grace, her form a blur of black and navy blue against the chaos. She raised her hands, and the shadows in the room deepened, coalescing into a dozen bolts of pure darkness. The woman in pink next to her raised her wand, and a shield of shimmering pink light erupted around them, deflecting a volley of crackling, orange energy bolts.

The woman in midnight blue threw her hands forward, and the shadow feathers shot forward, a storm of black blades that tore through the air with a deadly, whistling sound. They slammed into the woman in black's shield, a shimmering barrier of orange light that crackled and sparked under the assault.

The two magical girls moved in perfect sync, a symphony of light and shadow, a deadly dance of hope and despair. They were equals in every way, their powers a perfect complement to each other.

"Who... who is that," Su Yin whispered, her awe a quiet tremor in the suffocating silence. "She would qualify as an S-Rank easily."

"Star Nightingale. The three of us were partners and equals in every way, although it never felt like that for me," Elio said softly, a faint, sad smile on his face.

Multiple battles were unfolding around them, a desperate, chaotic melee against an army of twisted, reanimated corpses. They were eerily robot-like, moving with a jerky, unnatural precision. They wore the tattered remnants of various uniforms—the sleek armor of magitech soldiers, the flowing robes of combat mages, the vibrant regalia of Magical Girls. But their eyes were all the same: vacant, glowing with a malevolent orange light.

The figures moved with a stiff, puppet-like gait, their attacks coordinated, precise. And for the lack of a better word, it looked like there were supervillains on the mad woman's side too. The giant of a metal man laughed as he swatted a heroic knight in a white suit of armor into the wall, a sickening crunch echoing through the room. A gaunt, skeletal European figure in a tattered cloak cackled as he unleashed a wave of red energy that sent a trio of spandex-clad combatants flying. He held an athame dripping with blood, which he licked as he observed the carnage.

The young man in the martial artist's gi skillfully cartwheeled over the giant metal man's sweeping punch as a young woman in chrome armor with caramel brown skin countered, flying over him with purple energy crackling from her gauntlets. A blonde woman in a black suit of armor with glowing, white-hot plasma cannons embedded in her arms fought back to back with a woman in a red leather jacket wielding a chainsaw that hummed with red energy.

And in the center of it all, three figures stood their ground. The two magical girls were joined by a figure in a white and gold metal suit of armor, with golden circuits visible underneath the plating. A golden sun was emblazoned on the chest plate.

"Fools! All of you!" the necromancer shrieked, her voice a crescendo of insane glee. "You cling to your dying world like children clinging to a broken toy! But I offer you a new beginning! A chance to be reborn in a world of endless light!"

She raised her staff, and the orange energy swirling around her intensified, a vortex of pure, unadulterated energy that threatened to tear the room apart.

"We were outmatched..." Elio mumbled. "So far outmatched."

The golden warrior threw up a shield of golden light, but it shattered instantly under the necromancer's assault. He was thrown back, crashing into a wall with a sickening thud.

He hit the ground hard, his armor flickering and sparking as systems overloaded. Elio gripped his cane tighter, his knuckles white.

The giant of metal drove his fist into the martial artist's chest, hurling him across the chamber. The man struck a pillar, leaving a crater in its steel surface. He gasped, his body limp, but he was given no time to recover as the giant charged him faster than a man of that size had any right to move.

"No!" his companion in the chrome armor with purple gauntlets cried out. "Haru!"

"Osmium Titan. A simple, almost silly name, but a man more terrifying than any I've ever faced. A hero once, and arguably one of the five strongest beings in my world, if the the most lethal."

"Your world? So you're not..."

Elio ignored her, his eyes fixed on the scene playing out before us. The golden warrior on the ground coughed, a spatter of blood on his lips.

"We knew the price of failure. We knew the risks. But we fought anyway. For a world that was already lost. For a future that would never be."

Then, a small, sad smile touched Elio's lips.

"I did the calculations and countless simulations. She had shored up her power far, far too much for our ragtag coalition to stop. Our only hope was our beloved Fuwari, and she had been removed from the board before the final battle. We fought anyway."

I stared at him, my mind awhirl. The calm, gentle man I knew as my mentor, my uncle, was describing a suicidal last stand with the detached precision of a scientist analyzing a failed experiment. But I could see the pain in his eyes, a deep, abiding sorrow that he couldn't quite hide behind the academic's facade.

The two magical girls shifted their formation, standing protectively over the fallen golden warrior. Their gazes locked, an entire strategy communicated in a shared, silent breath. The necromancer saw it. Her triumphant smirk faltered, replaced by a venomous sneer.

"So sentimental. Your weaknesses are as predictable as your fates," she spat. "I am the goddess of the world that is to come! Let us see how your bond holds against oblivion!"

She raised her staff high, the sigils on the metal glowing with a feverish intensity. And then the energy from the rift swirled up the staff, a seething, corrosive orange shot through with veins of sickly blue. The light was hungry, devouring the very air around it, leaving a trail of silent screaming static.

She pointed the staff, and a torrent of that corrupted energy poured forth, not as a simple bolt, but as a river of liquid entropy, a tide designed to unmake reality itself.

"Heartfelt Echo: Final Aegis!"

A pink barrier, a translucent dome of interlocking hearts, materialized in an instant. She buckled briefly, but the woman in blue raised her hand next to her, shadows rising like wings unfurling from the ground. The light and dark met where the wave hit—pink lumina and indigo void pressing against the molten current, bending space in every direction. The floor cracked beneath their feet, patterns of light spidering outward like veins of glass about to shatter.

Jenny's face was contorted with strain, her hair lifting in the static, eyes burning with tears. "I can't—hold—it—"

Nightingale's tone stayed eerily steady, her voice low and taut. "Then I'll hold it with you. Stars and sea. Dawn and dusk. Always, Jin Jin."

Her own aura poured into the barrier, deep blues bleeding into pastel pinks until the dome flashed purple—two hearts, barely containing the flood.

Elio's voice cut through the cacophony, quiet but sure. "We underestimated her reach. Her control. She was tapping into something beyond. Something… primal. I realized then what we faced. Not just a sorceress. Not just a necromancer. A would-be god."

The battle raged around them, a desperate, chaotic melee. The giant Osmium Titan swatted the chrome-armored heroine aside like an insect, her purple gauntlets flickering and dying as she crashed into a console. She reached out desperately, painfully as the giant turned his attention back on the fallen martial artist. The blonde in the plasma cannons unloaded volley after volley at the skeletal figure, but he simply waved a skeletal hand, dissipating her attacks into harmless wisps of energy with a bored expression.

The necromancer laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated madness that echoed through the chamber. "Your little bond is cute, truly. A fairytale for children. But fairytales end!" She poured more power into her attack, the river of entropy surging, pressing against the shield.

The scene twisted, sped up, the image flickering with the rhythm of Elio's breath.

He continued, voice raw. "But she had something none of us predicted. A variable. A boy bred for a single purpose. A weapon with a heartbeat. He was the perfect tool by her side."

Stolen novel; please report.

The scene jolted, as if the projector had been kicked. A new figure lunged into frame - a young man, not much older than I was, in a sleek, obsidian bodysuit with a red mask and matching red half-cape.

Amid the slaughter, a small shape darted through the smoke - quick, almost delicate. A youth in a tattered cloak, a red mask glinting in the light of the rift. He moved like a shadow given form, slipping between combatants with inhuman speed. Wherever he went, bodies fell, sliced cleanly at the joints.

Nightingale turned at the motion, eyes widening in horror. "No!"

But it was too late. She could only stare in horror as Jenny noticed her friend's distress. The pink-haired magical girl's shield wavered for a fraction of a second, her concentration broken.

Red Masque seized the opening.

He moved with impossible speed, a blur of black and red. A blade, long and thin, appeared in his hand as if from thin air.

His blade sliced through the air, a whisper of death.

It found its mark.

Or it almost did.

At the last possible microsecond, Nightingale's head turned. Not toward the necromancer's attack, but toward her friend.

Her shield collapsed.

But her body moved in the same instant. She twisted, throwing herself in front of Jenny.

A spurt of crimson. A gasp of pain.

Nightingale collapsed, her midnight-blue hair fanning out on the floor like a spilled galaxy as the golden warrior jumped, boots emitting a thrust of energy.

The necromancer's attack sailed over them, striking the back wall of the chamber. The reinforced steel groaned, warped, then vaporized, leaving a gaping hole that looked out into a swirling vortex of kaleidoscopic chaos.

The world outside this room was being erased.

"One of her greatest creations," Elio said hoarsely. "Sixteen years old. A prodigious child trained from birth to murder the finest of us. We called him Red Masque."

The necromancer, radiant and terrible, descended with a contemptuous grin. "See? See what your sentimentality earns you? A pyrrhic victory. A funeral dirge for your fallen sister! She is dead now, and you will join her in oblivion!" She cackled, raising her staff to deliver the final blow.

The pink-haired magical girl cradled the fallen Nightingale, her body trembling with grief and rage. The masked teenager stood silently beside the sorceress, the rift swirling behind them.

"I am Mortiferia Nox! I am the Genesis," she hissed. "I am the world that endur—"

Then, without fanfare, she flinched.

The sound was small. The kind of noise you might hear when shoveling snow on a cold winter morning. Her body jerked, and for the briefest moment she looked confused - not divine, not terrible, just lost.

The blade jutted out through her chest.

Behind her stood the boy in the red mask. He trembled with the effort, both hands white-knuckled on the hilt. He wasn't an angel of retribution or an avenger of worlds — he was just a sixteen-year-old child, breathing hard, face half-hidden, eyes wide with the realization of what he'd done.

For the first time, the terrible villainess looked human. The light faltered behind her.

Blood — actual blood, dark and ordinary, dripped down her robes.

Her staff clattered to the floor. She turned her head slowly, lips parting like she might speak. Instead, she smiled. A small, crooked thing. Half-mad, half-broken.

And then she screamed.

The sound tore through the chamber, making the walls shudder and the rift howl louder in sympathy.

She turned, her body moving with a horrifying, unnatural grace.

Before Red Masque could pull the blade free, her hands shot out, grabbing him by the throat and tearing off his mask. He struggled, a choked gasp escaping his lips, his eyes wide with a sudden, childlike terror. His light brown skin was covered in a cold sweat and I could almost forget he'd just maimed and possibly killed a dozen people seconds before.

He panicked as she continued to bleed from her mouth and eyes, shoving him forward.

He thrashed wildly in her grip, a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf. She held him easily, her strength supernatural, her grip an iron shackle.

Then, he narrowed his eyes defiantly, and grabbed her in a body lock, the blade still stuck in her back and buried deeper into her chest as she screamed at him.

And he jumped, dragging them both toward the screaming, colorless vortex.

He yelled. A high, thin sound of pure terror, a boy's scream, not a warrior's.

Jenny lunged after them. "No!"

Her voice cracked as she reached toward the vanishing red cloak. She shot forward in a burst of pink light, managing to close the gap right as Red Masque let go and flung the sorceress into the void.

The pink-haired magical girl's hair flickered, briefly turning black as the dress flickered back to a t-shirt and jeans.

She snarled, reaching over the edge and grabbing the masked boy by the collar as he flailed. The injured 'sun knight' scrambled after her, catching her by the foot as she leaned out into the void. Her form flickered again, desperately holding onto the transformation that granted her the power to save even one more person.

"LET GO!" the young assassin shrieked. "My brother... just... just find him! Save him! Give him the life I never could!"

And with that, he shoved her back as the rift collapsed.

But she wouldn't let go. Not yet. Not again.

The golden warrior behind her groaned, but pulled.

I heard the sound of tearing flesh as Jenny's transformation failed completely and her hand slipped.

And then, something horrifying happened.

A single hand shot out of the rift. Half-melted, skeletal, burning with hatred and orange flame as an arm and head followed behind it. The owner's once-human eyes were gone, replaced by two circles of flickering static.

The half-melted hand clawed into the ruined platform, hissing where it touched steel. The woman in black hauled herself up by inches—skin blistering, hair fusing into threads of static—eyes like empty dials lit by stormlight. The room bent toward her like iron to a magnet. Loose casings skittered. Broken glass slid uphill. The rift howled approval.

She didn't rise so much as reassemble, frame by frame, until her mouth found a shape that could speak. "Not yet," she rasped. "I have... more to take."

The thing in black reached. Not for them. Past them.

Her fingers splayed toward the woman of shadows like a surgeon choosing a rib to cut through.

Symbols - razor-thin, orange and blue -spooled out from the rift and threaded through the air, homing in and stabbing into the blue woman's chest.

The woman of shadows struggled to her feet, bleeding light through the rents in her suit, yet eyes clear and bitterly calm in spite of the horrific, chthonian magic piercing through her.

She spread her fingers and the room's darkness gathered to her palm, folding in neat, concentric layers.

"No," she said, voice like velvet over steel. "How... how dare you. You'll take nothing else from this world. Never again. Go straight down the abyss where you belong!"

The monster smiled. With a wrenching click, something under reality's skin aligned. A vein of blue fire flared in the necromancer's sternum.

"Don't!" the pink-haired girl cried as the woman in shadows raised her hand, desperately holding on to the youth below. "Her power will rip you apart—"

"Then I'll choose how, I go" the indigo woman said - and fired off a spell.

"Give it back," the monster crooned. "Give me back... I sense... your child... give me your child..."

The woman in blue paused,

Her hand wavered, the light gathering at her palm fracturing like glass in water. For the first time, the light in her eyes faltered.

"What… did you say?!"

Nox's grin widened, torn lips trembling between madness and triumph. "Don't play innocent. I can feel it. A rhythm inside you. Something pure, soft, unfinished. It's calling to me."

Nightingale took a step back. Her other hand went protectively to her abdomen. The gesture was instinctive, almost invisible -but the world noticed. The light dimmed, and the air went very, very still.

Jenny's breath hitched. "...Maria?"

The golden, helmeted warrior turned sharply toward her.

Nox's half-ruined face twisted into a grin that was all hunger. "Ah… so that's what I felt. A rhythm. A vessel. A new world—ready to host me."

Maria froze. Her hand moved protectively over her abdomen. The instinct was ancient. Maternal. Terrified.

Jenny's eyes widened in horror. "Maria—!"

But Nox was already lunging.

Orange filaments whipped across the floor, searing through air and stone alike. Maria caught them with her shadows, teeth gritted, but Nox's energy dug in like hooks. The ground split between them, light erupting upward as two powers met in raw, catastrophic opposition.

Jenny held on to Red Masque with one hand, clinging to the ruined edge of the platform with the other. Elio braced himself behind her, armor groaning against the pull of the rift.

"Maria!" Jenny screamed, "Let go of it! You don't know what it—!"

"I can't!" Maria's voice tore through the roar. "If I do -she'll... she'll!"

Nox's laughter rang through the static. "Oh, I will take everything, little saint. Your world. Your very soul. Your child."

With Nox's final word, something snapped in the dark-haired magical girl's eyes.

"You... want... this?"

It was a whisper at first, almost lost in the howl of the void. Her aura, once a serene, deep blue, erupted into a violent, churning vortex of black and violet. The light in the room bent toward her, the fabric of space warping around her terrifying presence.

"You've taken... EVERYTHING! My friends! You turned them into puppets! You turned them into monsters! You turned our graves into your playground! My home! My family! I've given everything already! All to send you to hell where you belong."

Her shadows surged, not as a shield, but as a thousand razor-edged tendrils that lashed out, wrapping around Nox's flailing form.

"You think... you think you can also have my child? OUR LAST LIGHT?!"

The orange and blue filaments knotted together—then snapped. A surge of light erupted from between them, twisting, alive, thinking. It screamed without sound, racing through the air before plunging into Maria's chest.

Maria convulsed, eyes wide, as the light coursed through her veins. For a moment, her body was surrounded by constellations—then the glow sank inward, coalescing at her core.

Nox reeled backward, clutching her sternum. "What—what did you do!?"

Maria collapsed to one knee, trembling, eyes unfocused. "I—I don't know…" She pressed her hand over her heart—then down, lower, over the faint shimmer beneath her ribs. The rhythm beneath her hand was not her own.

And yet - she smiled. "But you can ponder on it as I send you to hell."

Nox screamed, the sound feral. "No... no! You took it! Give it back!"

She lunged again. Jenny shouted something wordless and let go of the ledge. Her wand blazed back to life as her transformation flared—ragged, unstable.

The pink-haired magical girl's wings burst from her shoulders, half light, half static. She span in the air, tossing the screaming youth back over the battlefield, and she slammed into Nox mid-lunge.

"You're not touching her!"

The impact hurled both of them slamming towards the edge. Elio grabbed Jenny's wrist again, trying to pull her back. "Jin!"

But Nox's claws locked around his pauldron, dragging him down with her. The three tumbled over the fractured precipice into the vortex.

"Elio!" Maria screamed.

Jenny's light flared violently, the last of her strength bleeding into the transformation as they grappled with the half-melted shrieking corpse of a would-be empress, a storm of pink and orange light, a battle fought on the edge of oblivion.

"Maria! Get out of here!" Elio shouted.

Maria staggered to her feet, her aura flickering, eyes unfocused. "No! I can pull you back—!"

Elio looked up at her from the edge, armor cracked, one hand still holding Jenny's. For a split second, through the broken visor, his eyes softened. "You already saved us, all" he said. "Now save her."

Then the rift yawned wider.

Maria gasped, "No!"

Jenny screamed, "We... love you! And always will!" and the pink light exploded outward, engulfing the three of them. Elio, Jenny, and the mangled, shrieking Nox.

They vanished into the void.

The room fell still.

The reanimated soldiers crumbled to dust. The rift sealed shut in a whisper of static. Only Nightingale remained, kneeling amid the wreckage, her shadowy aura fading to faint blue. She looked down at her hands. The faint rhythm pulsed under her palm again, steady, alive.

She wept - silently, beautifully, as light spilled from the cracks around her, the last remnants of the war dissolving into mist.

Then the vision fractured and bled out of color.

Elio's cane clicked against the tile in the present. He didn't look at me or Su Yin. His eyes were far away.

"She didn't mean to steal it," he said softly. "None of us knew what it was. But the world did."

He exhaled, the sound half a sigh, half a confession. "And the world never forgave her for it."

"Another Earth... The Night Mother died here. But..."

Su Yin stared at the empty spot where the vortex had been, her expression dawning with horror. "It's here. The source of all this dimensional phenomena. That's... that's her."

"Not her," Elio corrected, his tone heavy with the weight of history. "But I suspect the real me is close to understanding what it is that drove her mad. And how she became so overwhelmingly powerful."

He adjusted his spectacles. "Come. There's something else you need to see."

He limped toward a heavy steel door at the far end of the lab, which was rapidly turning back into a suburban living room around us. It turned into a plain white door as he swung it open.

"I have much to postulate on this Gossamer Echo... I was correct in my analysis of the phenomenon being a repository for memory... but not memory of a single individual's past..." Elio said, more to himself than to us.

He took a deep breath, his gaze fixed on the dark hall beyond.

"I suspect it draws from the strongest possible anchor points it can find within its effective radius. It needs... raw material. The real Jenny, for instance, has a deep-seated desire to protect the innocent, a core drive so powerful it could anchor an entire world of its own. Whatever entity created this world seemed to do it reflexively, as a defensive measure."

He turned to face us, his hazel eyes gleaming with an intellectual fire that belied his exhaustion. "Which makes me wonder... why is this the strongest anchor point hidden away from the happy afternoon tea we just had?"

He stepped aside, revealing a suburban childhood bedroom.

It was a girl's room, frozen in a moment of arrested toddlerhood. A single bed was pushed against the wall, covered in a pink comforter printed with cartoon stars and moons. A small, white nightstand stood next to it, a pink unicorn lamp casting a soft, warm glow.

A rocking horse sat in the corner, its paint chipped and faded, a silent testament to countless hours of imaginary adventures. The walls were painted a soft, pastel pink, adorned with a few carefully chosen drawings: a crayon sun with a lopsided smile, a house with a crooked chimney, a stick-figure family holding hands.

But it was the details that made the room feel so real, so achingly familiar. A half-finished puzzle on the floor, a few plastic building blocks scattered on a rug. A small, wooden music box on the nightstand, its lid open, revealing a tiny, twirling ballerina. A framed photograph on the dresser, a smiling couple with a little girl with green eyes and slate black hair, their faces full of a love that seemed to radiate from the glossy paper.

The room was a perfect, pristine replica of a childhood, a shrine to a life that was, but wasn't, mine.

"Now, isn't that a curiosity? But I do believe I was plucked here for a reason."

He limped towards the bed, his gaze fixed on the nightstand. He picked up the music box, his fingers tracing the delicate, carved wood.

"I've seen this before," he said, his voice a quiet, reverent whisper. "In another world. Another life."

He opened the lid, and a soft, tinkling melody filled the room. It was a simple, sweet tune, the kind of music that brought back memories of a warm summer night, of a mother's lullaby, of a world that was safe and full of wonder.

"Quite a blessed life you lived, wasn't it..."

He turned towards the shadows behind us.

"Aleksei...?" he called out, his voice a quiet, weary sigh.

A figure emerged from the darkness, a silhouette against the encroaching gloom. He was a tall, gaunt man, dressed in a simple black suit that seemed to absorb the light. His hair was a stark, shocking white, a stark contrast to the youthful smoothness of his face. He had to have been in his mid-twenties to early thirties by the look of it.

But it was his eyes that held my attention. They were a warm piercing green, the color of new leaves in the spring. They were kind, but they held a deep, abiding sadness, a weariness that seemed to go beyond his years.

"Well, well, well. Looks like you finally figured it out in some manner," the man said, a faint, wry smile playing on his lips. "Took you long enough."

The strange man's gaze drifted past Elio, past Su Yin, and landed on me.

His smile widened, a genuine, affectionate expression that made my heart ache with a feeling I couldn't quite place.

"I suppose then, that Project Raiju was a success?"

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