Chapter 2 The Convergence Arrives

AMELIE Pov

The letter arrives on the third morning after the market.

I recognize the seal before I break it—the Royal Academy's insignia pressed into crimson wax. My fingers tremble as I unfold the parchment.

Miss Amelie Sheppard,

Your presence is requested at the Royal Observatory on the night of the Astral Convergence. The alignment of Selas, Morath, and Tyven occurs but once every three centuries. Your unique talents as a cartographer may prove invaluable to our study of this celestial phenomenon.

The event begins at midnight, three days hence.

Royal Astronomer Callens

Three days.

I set the letter on my desk, next to the maps that have been consuming me since that night in the market. Every city I've drawn in the past seventy-two hours has been wrong. The lines shift when I'm not looking. The streets rearrange themselves. And all of them—every impossible building, every phantom road—points in the same direction.

North. Toward the palace. Toward the convergence.

My quill hovers over a fresh sheet of parchment, but I can't bring myself to draw. Something inside me knows that whatever I create today will only confirm what I already suspect.

This moment has been written in my maps for weeks. I just didn't know how to read it.

The second letter arrives that afternoon, delivered by a breathless courier who won't meet my eyes.

I know my mother's handwriting before I open it.

Amelie,

Do not attend the convergence. Do not leave your cottage. Keep your shutters closed. Lock your doors. Please, my daughter, for once in your life, obey me without question.

The convergence is not what they think it is.

Stay inside.

Mother

No explanation. No reasoning. Just fear bleeding through every word.

I crumple the letter in my fist.

Twenty-four years of rules I've followed blindly. Twenty-four years of living in the shadow of her terror, keeping myself small and separate and safe. And for what? I still don't know why I can't let my shadow touch another's. I still don't understand what I'm afraid of.

I smooth the letter out, reading it again. The ink has smudged where her hand must have shaken.

The convergence is not what they think it is.

What does she know that I don't?

I look at my maps. At the lines that converge on a single point. At the patterns that have been forming without my conscious direction.

My entire life has been about mapping the impossible. About trusting the lines even when they lead nowhere. About following the paths that appear in dreams.

And every line I've drawn is screaming at me to go.

I arrive at the Royal Observatory as the first moon rises.

Selas hangs low on the horizon, massive and silver. Scholars crowd the palace gardens, their telescopes pointed skyward. I recognize some of them—mystics I've worked with, astronomers who've commissioned my maps. They nod in greeting, but their attention is on the heavens.

The air tastes different. Sharper. Like copper and starlight.

"Miss Sheppard." Royal Astronomer Callens approaches, his face flushed with excitement. "I'm delighted you came. We've set up an observation station for you on the eastern balcony. Your... unique perspective may help us document what we're about to witness."

He leads me through corridors of marble and moonlight to a balcony that overlooks the entire capital. The city of Ashmir spreads below us, a constellation of lanterns and lives.

And above—

Morath rises to join Selas. The second moon, smaller and tinged with gold. They hang like twins in the darkness.

"Tyven will complete the alignment at midnight," Callens says, his voice reverent. "When all three moons converge, the boundary between realms grows thin. Some say we can see into other timelines. Others believe it's when the dead can speak. We don't know what's true. But we're about to find out."

He leaves me alone with parchment and ink, expecting me to document whatever miracle unfolds.

But I'm not watching the moons.

I'm watching my shadow.

It stretches across the marble floor, cast by the combined light of two moons. And it's moving. Not the way shadows shift when light changes—this is different. Deliberate. Like something breathing.

The third moon rises.

Tyven crests the horizon, deep red like old blood. The moment it joins the other two, the sky tears open.

Auroras explode across the darkness—ribbons of green and violet and colors I've never seen, colors that don't have names. The light cascades down like waterfalls of stars. Below, people gasp. Someone screams in wonder.

Reality feels elastic. The air bends. Time stutters.

And my shadow begins to ripple like water.

I watch, frozen, as it moves independently of me. The darkness at my feet shifts and swells, responding to something I can't see. My mother's warning echoes in my mind—stay inside—but it's too late. I'm here. The convergence has found me.

The auroras intensify. The three moons align perfectly, and for a moment, the world holds its breath.

Then my shadow starts to pull.

Not shifting. Pulling. Like something is trying to tear it free from my body.

I stumble backward, but the darkness stretches with me, extending impossibly long across the marble. The edges of my shadow reach toward the convergence light, toward the impossible colors bleeding across the sky.

Terror claws up my throat.

This is what she was afraid of. This is why she made me promise.

My shadow is trying to leave me.

And somewhere in the tearing auroras, in the space between three moons, I hear something that shouldn't exist.

A heartbeat that isn't mine.