Prologue
***
The blade pressed against her throat before she even opened her eyes.
She jerked back, fully awake now, and found herself staring into gray eyes that held the kind of focus that meant someone was deciding whether to kill you. The face was sharp-angled, carved from the same unforgiving stone as the walls around them. Familiar in a way that made her stomach drop.
"Zarin?"
The blade pressed closer. A bead of warmth rolled down her neck.
"You don't belong here." His voice was exactly what she'd imagined — rough honey over broken glass — but she'd never wanted to hear it aimed at her with such cold certainty. "Whatever you are, whatever sent you, you leave. Now."
***
Hours earlier...
The tablet screen burned in Noje's palm like a fever dream at three seventeen in the morning.
She shifted in her desk chair, spine popping after six straight hours hunched over the same three panels. Empty energy drink cans lined her desk like silver monuments. RedBull. Monster. Some off-brand thing that tasted like static and promised twelve hours of focus. It lied. She had been running on fumes for the last two.
But it was done.
Twenty-three panels of Zarin's latest adventure. Every stroke of his angular jaw refined. Every shadow laid just so. She had redrawn his smile in panel seven twelve times to get that perfect curve. The one that said I'm dangerous but worth it. Panel fifteen, where he offered his hand, had taken forty-seven tries. She had the file history to prove it.
Through the wall, Maya's soft snoring drifted in like distant windchimes. A quiet reminder that other people were sleeping. People with balanced lives and working sleep cycles. People who didn't crawl through their stories like they were safer than real life.
Noje's cursor hovered above the Upload button.
Just one click. That was it. Three weeks of her life about to vanish into the void. Maybe fifty people would read it. Maybe five would comment. Maybe her parents would stumble on it somehow and chalk it up as another sign that Noje was wasting her future.
Her finger trembled above the screen.
What if they hated it. What if Zarin's smile looked forced. What if forty-seven revisions only made him worse. What if the moment in panel fifteen, the one she believed in more than anything, meant nothing to anyone else?
What if no one cared about Zarin the way she did?
That thought landed hard.
Six months since Grandma's funeral. Six months since anyone looked at her art and called it beautiful. Her parents saw distractions. Her professors saw late work. Her classmates saw the weird girl who hoarded energy drinks and never went out.
But in panel fifteen, when Zarin reached out, she had drawn hope. Not the clean kind. Not the kind you rehearse. The kind that made you believe someone might still choose to stay.
She took a breath.
Then she pressed her finger down.
The screen blinked once.
Then again.
But instead of the usual uploading animation, something rippled across the tablet. The panels shimmered like they were underwater. Zarin's expression in panel seven shifted, just slightly. His smile widened by a hair.
Her breath stilled.
The tablet grew hot.
She tried to pull away but couldn't. The heat ran up her arms. Her screen pulsed like a heartbeat.
Then Zarin turned.
Not drawn frame by frame. Not as a loop. He turned as if he were real. Eyes lifting until they met hers.
His lips moved.
Finally, he said, though no sound came through the screen. I was wondering when you'd find me.
Noje's heart stuttered.
The screen lit up. The heat flared. Her vision tipped sideways. She couldn't tell if she was falling into the tablet or if something inside was pulling her through.
Somewhere behind her, distant as a dream, she thought she heard Maya call her name.
Then everything went dark.
Cold stone pressed against her palms. Her real palms.
Noje blinked into pale morning light. She was kneeling on gray flagstones, smooth and cold beneath her hands. The air smelled like wind and ash. Her fingers curled over the edge of something solid. Not a tablet. Not her desk.
She looked down.
She was still in her hoodie and shorts. Her stained socks. Her chipped black nail polish. Her actual body.
Noje rose slowly to her feet.
Around her was a corridor she had never seen. But she knew it. The way you know places you have drawn with your whole chest. Stone walls. Iron sconces. That exact tilt in the morning light.
Far ahead, in the shadowed hall, came the sound of footsteps. Measured. Calm.
Like someone who had been waiting a long time.
And somehow she already knew who it was.