The morning after the palace felt suspiciously normal.

  Which, in Graybarrow, meant at least two things had already caught fire and someone had mistaken a weather charm for a cooking spell during breakfast.

  I made my tea, poured it into my favorite chipped mug, and walked out to where my floating stump hovered dutifully beside the porch. I’d told it that no one supported me like it did.

  I sank into the mossy seat, savoring the creak of old bark beneath me as Barley stood in the yard holding out a sock like it was a sacred offering.

  Roku stared at him with the intense suspicion of someone who’d once been tricked out of a treat. The sock disappeared into his mouth a second later.

  The town was already bustling. Smoke spiraled lazily from chimneys, the scent of something spicy and slightly scorched drifting through the air. Yuuhi’s voice echoed from her window as she argued with her oven—again. From farther down the lane came a loud crash, followed by a multilingual string of swears and the clatter of upturned produce. A typical Graybarrow morning.

  I smiled. It wasn’t perfect—nothing in Graybarrow ever was—but it was mine. A mess I understood. A rhythm I could live with.

  It lasted exactly twelve minutes.

  A distant voice cracked through the otherwise peaceful square.

  "Mayor Nojin! Urgent dispute at the west end!"

  I turned, mug still in hand, to see a Murmoth gliding toward me. Her wings twitched, more agitated than graceful, and her eyes looked distinctly underslept—likely because she was. Murmoths were nocturnal by nature. Seeing one active in the daylight usually meant something had gone terribly—or dramatically—wrong.

  "The shadows flicker where frost dares challenge flame," she murmured, wings quivering with residual tension.

  "Let me guess," I said.

  "The sundial situation," said a broad-shouldered Terracyn ambling behind her, his stone-like brow furrowed. "They’re arguing again."

  He handed me a folded note scrawled in flowery cursive and stamped with a faint splash of copper.

  "The Murmoths were caught trying to turn back the sundial," he explained. "They said it would give them more night. The Kindlings caught them and accused them of trying to steal time."

  I took a sip of tea and sighed. "They know it doesn’t actually work like that, right?"

  "Not the point," the Murmoth said delicately. "The symbolism matters. The hourglass speaks."

  "Sure it does."

  I looked down at Roku. He gave a long-suffering huff.

  "Alright," I muttered. "Time to play diplomat over metaphors and sunlight."

  As we walked, a Kindling child darted past, waving a tiny sign that read Time Thieves Will Burn. Behind her, a Murmoth fluttered down from a rooftop, trailing charcoal sketches and muttering about temporal oppression.

  By the time we reached the sundial—an old bronze disk surrounded by a semicircle of benches and overgrown flowerbeds—the standoff had fully bloomed.

  The Kindlings gathered in a heated knot, dramatically demanding restitution for temporal vandalism. The Murmoths stood beneath the shadows of a flowering arch, cloaked in gloom and muttering about celestial injustice.

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  "Enough!" I called. "No more tampering with town timepieces. And from now on, if you want to protest something, you have to do it in a language the average townsperson can understand. Preferably not metaphor. Or infernos!"

  Graybarrow. A place where even the passage of time had a personality.

  And somehow, still exactly where I belonged.

  The crowd began to disperse with a mix of huffs, flutters, and smoldering indignation. The Kindlings muttered like extinguished torches, and the Murmoths drifted into the alley shadows with what I assumed were poetic complaints about artificial time constructs.

  Roku padded up beside me, dropped the now slightly singed protest sign at my feet, and blinked. I scratched behind his horn.

  "Let’s hope they don’t try to start a petition to remove the sun next," I muttered.

  Roku sneezed, a burst of blue sparks puffing from his snout like confetti. The sparks hit the nearest planter, which promptly floated two feet into the air, spinning slowly like a confused carousel.

  I stared at it. Then at Roku.

  "Really? Again?"

  He sneezed a second time, and the planter landed back down with a light thud.

  "Better," I nodded, before taking a deep breath and starting the trek back home.

  Yuuhi was waiting on the porch when I returned, one hand on her hip and the other holding a tin of what looked like dangerously experimental cookies.

  "Well?" she asked as I stepped up. "How was the ball? Did anyone try to kill you before dessert or after?"

  "Technically before," I said, brushing a leaf off my sleeve. "But the griffin-shaped chocolate survived."

  Barley, who had apparently been loitering just out of sight, emerged from behind the woodpile with suspiciously perfect timing and flopped onto the steps beside Roku. "Was there dancing? Did you dance? Did Kira dance? I bet you kissed after you were all pressed up together."

  I stared at him. "Keep that up, and I’ll make you catalog all the mold in town."

  Yuuhi smirked and popped open the cookie tin. "Here, Barley. Try one of these."

  He squinted suspiciously. "What does it do?"

  "It’s supposed to—"

  "You’re giving out magically enhanced cookies again?" I interrupted, exasperated.

  "They’re mostly stable," Yuuhi said with a shrug.

  Barley had already backed up two steps, shielding Roku with a dramatic arm motion. "I like my limbs the way they are, thanks. And so does Roku. He's very attached to his tail."

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and muttered, "I faced a cosmic assassin in formalwear, and somehow this is more exhausting."

  Roku gave a soft woof that sounded suspiciously like agreement.

  I escaped to the kitchen not long after, clutching what was left of my tea and pretending I didn’t hear Barley ask Yuuhi if licking the cookie would still count.

  The light spilling through the window had that golden, end-of-day warmth that made everything feel briefly, fleetingly perfect. I set my mug down and leaned on the counter, exhaling through my nose and letting the calm settle in. The presence of the familiar.

  This was the rhythm I understood. A kitchen that smelled like hung spices and the lingering scent of Yuuhi’s latest brewing experiment from her own cottage down the path, the dull rattle of wind charms outside, the low murmur of town life winding down.

  I once halted a battlefield long enough to stop a charge—just a binding sigil cast into the dirt, quick and precise. I’ve disrupted enemy lines with little more than a well-placed spell and a reputation they didn’t want to test. Back then, I stood in Concord’s Hall of Records, where the oaths of peacekeepers were etched into basalt columns that shimmered with living runes.

  And somehow, this mattered more.

  A light knock interrupted my thoughts.

  Yuuhi peeked in. "They’re gone. Barley’s outside testing cookie resilience on garden stones. I didn’t stop him."

  "Good call," I said.

  She came in, holding a cookie that glowed with ominous pride. "Want to talk about it? The ball?"

  "I’d rather talk about this cookie and whether it’s planning something."

  She held it up. "Caramel basil surprise. Unless it decides to go rogue."

  We both stared at it for a second.

  Then she perched on the table’s edge and tilted her head. "You alright, Nojin?"

  I hesitated.

  She waited.

  "I’m tired," I said, voice low. "But I’m where I need to be."

  Yuuhi didn’t push, but she didn’t leave either. She broke the cookie in half and offered me a piece. I took it, chewing slowly as the basil hit stronger than expected.

  "I saw someone at the ball," I added after a pause. "Someone I never thought I’d see again. One of Azzerec’s old lackeys. Wehyr."

  Yuuhi’s brows lifted. "The Butcher of the Shattered Ring?"

  I nodded. "He tried to kill everyone in the ballroom. And then he recognized me. Called me Kennojin."

  "Because that’s who you are," she said gently.

  I shook my head. "Not anymore. That name belongs to someone who thought he could fix the world with force and fire. Who believed in peace so much he tried to impose it."

  Yuuhi stayed quiet, the weight of history thick between us.

  "I left because I saw Concord becoming the very thing I once tried to tear down," I said quietly. "I was tired of cycles. Tired of pretending the good guys always knew best. So I walked away. Built something small. Something real."

  Yuuhi tapped the edge of her cookie against the tin. "You think it’s going to find you again?"

  I didn’t answer.

  But the answer sat with me all the same.