We duck beneath a low branch, padding through marsh and moss for several long minutes.

“My war isn’t with you,” he says at last.

“And mine isn’t with you,” I say, and it feels like a very small truce.

We don’t speak again until we break through the trees. Gil closes his fist until the light disappears, and my eyes stretch across the beach, the sand lit by moonlight and the waves moving in a gentle lullaby along the shore.

“Ahmet is circling the beach. We can wait for him here,” Gil says, taking a seat in the sand.

I hesitate before taking a place next to him, pulling my knees to my chest and lifting my chin to the sky. The stars flicker like fireflies, dancing in a world of their own.

I remember the last time I went stargazing with Mei. I remember how much she hated it.

“That’s weird,” I say suddenly, frowning in the sparkling distance. “I can’t find Orion.”

“That’s because the sky has no rules,” he says quietly, staring across the ocean. “No human can remember where every star should be, so it changes whenever it needs to. There’s a rumor Residents can’t even see the stars—that they’re another part of this world that is too human for them to grasp, just like dreaming. Because while they’re limited, the night sky is infinite.”

Infinite. Just like this world. Just like time itself.

“I used to go camping with my parents a lot. We’d spend all night looking at the stars.” The memory makes my chest tighten. I dig my heels in the sand. “Sometimes I feel like I’m desperately trying to hold on to them—my family and my friends.” I think of Finn, and it scares me that everything I once felt for him seems to be fading.

Does it mean it wasn’t real? That I didn’t care as much as I thought?

Or have I been in Infinity long enough to forget?

Gil’s eyes drop to the shoreline. “It’s easier to let them go.”

I turn to him, voice shaking. “If I let them go, I won’t know who I am anymore. I was a daughter, and a sister, and a friend. And now…” The rest of my words are wedged in my throat, unable to get out.

Death is changing me, but it’s also holding me back. I’m still so tied to the living world and to my desire to protect Mei. I keep reaching out to Ophelia like I haven’t been able to fully break the habit. And I don’t know how to forget about my murder, or my family, or my fear.

But what if I could? What if I could exist without baggage, and regret, and the guilt of dying too young?