Eris didn't sleep.
He stayed on the roof until the stars thinned and the sky softened toward dawn. Lysa had eventually gone back inside, muttering something about "needing at least some rest before the universe collapses."
He envied that.
The village below stirred awake—slow, ordinary, unaware.
A baker opened shutters. A dog barked at nothing. Smoke rose from a chimney in a lazy spiral.
Everything looked normal.
That was the problem.
Eris felt it before it happened.
A pressure in the air. Not weight—absence of weight. Like the world was forgetting how to hold itself together.
Then—
It happened.
A single heartbeat of wrongness.
The sound of morning vanished.
No birds. No footsteps. No wind.
The smoke from the chimney stopped mid-curl.
Frozen.
Not in ice.
In pause.
Lysa burst out of the inn door below. She looked around once, eyes wide.
"I felt that!"
Eris dropped from the roof, landing beside her.
"Inside," he said.
"Why? Time just tripped over its own feet—how does a roof help?"
"Because walls remember reality better than open sky."
She blinked. "That's the worst explanation I've ever accepted. Move."
They ran inside.
The moment the door shut—
Sound snapped back.
Outside, life resumed like nothing had happened.
Lysa leaned against the door, breathing hard. "Okay. I vote we leave before the next cosmic hiccup deletes the bakery."
Eris nodded. "Pack light."
"I always do."
They turned—
—and saw Mara standing behind the counter, watching them calmly.
"You two felt it too," she said.
Eris went still.
"You remember?" he asked.
"Course I do," she said. "I've lived through three border collapses, one sky fracture, and a year when gravity forgot which way was down on Tuesdays."
Lysa stared. "I'm sorry—what village did I grow up in?"
Mara wiped a mug like this was a normal conversation. "The kind that survives by not panicking first."
She looked at Eris.
"You're the center of it, aren't you?"
Eris didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
Mara nodded once. "Thought so."
She reached under the counter and pulled out a small wrapped bundle, sliding it across.
"Road bread. Dried fruit. And a charm stone from the old shrine. Doesn't stop monsters… but it helps you remember who you are when things start unraveling."
Lysa picked it up carefully. "You had this ready."
"I've been running an inn longer than you've been alive," Mara said. "You learn to pack for storms you can't see yet."
Eris met her eyes. "Thank you."
She waved it off. "Just come back someday and pay for the second drink."
A faint tremor passed through the floor.
Not physical.
Structural.
Like reality shifting its footing.
Eris felt it lock onto him.
Far away.
Closer than before.
Lysa slung her bag over her shoulder. "So where are we going?"
Eris looked toward the distant hills.
Where the shimmer had appeared.
"Toward it," he said.
She groaned. "Of course we are."
Another silent beat skipped in the rhythm of the world.
Longer.
This time, a bird mid-flight outside simply… wasn't there when time resumed.
Lysa saw the empty sky.
"…Okay," she said quietly. "Let's go before the sky starts misplacing us."
Eris stepped out onto the road.
Not running anymore.
Not hiding.
Whatever was coming—
He would meet it moving forward.
And the world, fragile and flickering behind them, held its breath.