The beginning of the end.

“Over here!” I called again, lifting the thing I’d dug out from the rubble. An old picture frame, glass cracked straight down the middle but still somehow holding together.

Sylvi rushed up, out of breath, eyes darting like she’d expected me to be bleeding or half-dead. Instead, I grinned and held it up. “Look.”

I brushed at the glass with my sleeve, coughed as the dust jumped back at me. “Ugh—damn, this place is trying to kill my lungs before anything else.”

The back of the frame was loose, so I worked it off slow, careful not to snap it apart. The photo slid out into my hands, lighter than it looked.

A family. Three people, frozen in a moment that shouldn’t have survived this long. The man in the middle wore a neat suit, lanyard dangling—probably an ID for this very place. His arm around the woman beside him—same color scheme, down to the little pin on her lapel. Coordinated, like they wanted the world to see they were one unit.

But it was the girl that held me. She grinned wide, clutching a bouquet so tight it looked like it might vanish if she loosened her grip. One flower tucked behind her ear, matching her mother. Same smile, same eyes.

“A reminder of family while they worked?” I muttered. My chest tightened. “This place must’ve taken everything from them.”

Dust pressed on my lungs, my tongue stuck dry to my teeth. “That bouquet… there must’ve been plants here once. Now it’s just desert. Nobody’s left to carry that memory.”

“Aw, look,” Sylvi said softly, almost amused. “They’re matching. Cherry blossom flowers.”

The word hit like a hammer.

“…Yeah.” My throat was dry. “Yeah, they are.”

I stared harder at the photo. The colors had been drained probably millennia before, but still—my mind supplied the hue. Petals, pale pink—

“Cherry blossoms,” I finished my thought aloud, slow, almost tasting the word.

Sylvi frowned. “What?”

I turned toward her. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. The air between us stretched thin as wire.

“You…” My voice trailed, dropped low.

I swallowed.

“You know cherry blossoms look are?”

The words left me raw, half-whispered, but they didn’t echo. They just sat there between us, sinking. Sylvi tilted her head, confusion painting her face like she didn’t understand why I cared. But that was the problem—she shouldn’t understand. Not here. Not now.

My pulse hammered. I gripped the frame tighter, glass biting my palm.

No one in this world knew that word. Not like that. Not as if they’d seen it. Flowers don’t grow in deserts. They haven’t for… I don’t even know how long, they shouldn’t even exist in this world. But I remember them. I remember the spring, petals falling softly, soft and violent all at once. I remember the smell, faint but sharp, like sweetness stretched thin. 

No one else could. Not unless—

I felt my breath stutter. My mind reeled back through every moment since I’d met her.

“You’re…” I stopped myself, teeth grinding. My heart slammed so hard against my ribs I thought it might crack them.

I forced my eyes up, and hers were already waiting for me. Too calm. Too steady.

“You’re not Sylvi… are you?”

. . .

In that moment—

in that fraction of a second—

Juno realized something.

It wasn’t the photo.

It wasn’t the word.

It was her.

Sylvi.

The girl who once tore through the desert on a machine built from scrap and spite. The girl who threw knives with hands that didn’t shake, who met death with a grin sharp enough to cut glass. The girl who didn’t wait for rescue—who was the rescue.

That girl was gone.

He thought back. To the nights in Solaris, when her voice had trembled. To the mansion, where her strength drained into silence. She crumbled; now she followed instead of leading. To all the times she reached for others, not for herself.

A decline too steady to notice until...

This was the conclusion Juno came to in his mind:

that Sylvi was no longer who she had been.

That the desert had stolen her piece by piece until nothing of her remained but a shell clinging to others to stand.

But it could only be farther from the truth.

The real truth is that Sylvaine never survived the fall into the lab.

The real truth is that she never left Vassier’s mansion on a bike with Juno.

The real truth is that she never traded words with Rilke, she never met her.

The real truth is that she never lived long enough to see Gideon’s mangled body.

Sylvi died in the sand that day. The day of the Sunvault Grand Prix.

The day the world bent, if only for a heartbeat, to her will. The day the desert itself knelt in awe. The day of the race. She was left alone in the desert to drown in her own blood after conquering the desert, The Devourer of the Sun, Sol’kara.

Neither she nor Gideon would live to see it—

the beginning.

The beginning of what so many would later call

the end.