They entered the house together.
There were introductions in the hall, although afterwards Daniel would remember very little of what anyone had said. Kane’s handshake was firm, his manner quieter than Daniel had expected from the account sent from Chicago. Elena kept Sal beside her, watching each new face before allowing herself to return a smile.
Mara took her coat.
“You’ve had a long journey.”
Elena glanced towards her son.
“He slept.”
“Then he’s doing better than most of us.”
Sal was looking beyond them.
Lindiwe followed his gaze towards the sitting room.
“This way.”
The two cases waited on the low table beside the window.
Sal stopped at the doorway.
Daniel felt the pressure gather behind his eyes. He turned towards Mara and saw silver spreading through hers, brighter than it had been outside. Across the room, Vale raised his head.
Elena’s hand tightened around her son’s.
“Michael.”
Kane looked at her.
His eyes were glowing too.
He had no time to ask what she meant before he saw the same light in Sal’s face. The boy stood very still, his attention fixed on the nearer case.
Lindiwe moved beside Elena.
“It’s happened to us before.”
Elena looked at her, then at the amulet in her hand. Every stone was lit.
Jonathan remained near the door with Gabriel and Lucía. He watched Daniel, checked Mara’s face and quietly set his notebook on a side table.
Sal released his mother’s hand.
She let him take a step, then followed.
He reached the table without hesitation. One amulet lay within its fitted metallic case, the central gem shining among five smaller lights. He looked down at it for a moment, his expression losing the last trace of uncertainty.
Then he picked it up.
The pulse passed through the room.
Daniel felt it before he saw the curtains stir. A warmth moved through him, deep enough to make his knees loosen. Beside him, Mara drew a startled breath and caught his arm.
Kane pressed his hand against his side.
The familiar ache had sharpened once, then disappeared.
He stood waiting for it to return. Since the shooting, almost every movement had carried a warning: turn carefully, reach slowly, remember what was damaged. Now he could feel only the warmth spreading beneath his hand.
“Michael?” Elena said.
He undid a button of his shirt.
Beneath it, the dressing lifted easily. The skin where the wound should have been was smooth.
Elena stared.
Sal looked up from the amulet.
For an instant, Kane remembered the boy kneeling beside him on the house floor, trying desperately to hold together something neither of them understood.
This time there had been no effort in his face.
Daniel flexed his fingers. A small split beside his thumbnail, left from handling the fitted stones in the cave, had closed. He looked towards Mara, who had drawn back her sleeve and was studying her arm.
Lindiwe’s eyes filled with tears.
She wiped them away with the back of her hand, laughing once in surprise.
The warmth remained among them.
Kane looked at the second case.
He had recognised its purpose before he could have explained why. Even now, with his wound gone and the boy holding an object he had seen inside his own mind, he hesitated before reaching for it.
Vale stood on the other side of the table.
“You don’t have to.”
Kane looked at him, then towards Sal.
The boy held his amulet comfortably in both hands.
Kane reached down.
When he lifted his own, something in the room aligned.
Daniel felt the others become distinct around him. Until then, their presence had been a reassurance at the edge of his awareness. Now he knew where each stood without looking. He felt Sal’s wonder, Kane’s concentration, Lindiwe trying to steady them all.
Mara’s hand tightened on his arm. Beyond the window, the trees disappeared. A city extended beneath a wide, bright sky.
The window frame thinned and vanished. Warm air moved over Daniel’s face, carrying a scent of water and something growing. Beneath his feet, the carpet became pale stone.
Elena stepped back.
Jonathan caught the doorframe, but there was no doorframe to hold. For several seconds he stood at the edge of a terrace overlooking buildings that rose in broad curves above gardens and waterways. Voices drifted up from below.
All six stood together in the sunlight.
Daniel tried to turn towards Mara, but the movement seemed to begin in more than one body. He felt her attempt to reach him as clearly as his own. The city sharpened, filling his awareness with distances, sounds and lives he could not contain.
Kane said something.
Daniel heard it from far away.
Then the sunlight went out.
Elena caught Sal before he reached the floor.
Gabriel lowered Kane beside the table, protecting his head. Lucía went to Lindiwe while Jonathan struggled to support Daniel and Mara together. Vale had fallen into the chair behind him, his amuletless hands resting open against his knees.
The sitting room had returned.
Beyond the window stood the trees and the familiar drive.
Elena called her son’s name, then called it again when he did not answer. His eyes were closed. He was breathing.
Within minutes, the household was moving around them. Someone brought blankets; someone else telephoned the doctor who attended the manor.
Jonathan opened the padded box. A pale light shone through the cloth. He folded it back.
The metallic bar lay beneath it, its engraved lines illuminated from within. The six figures around the empty circle had become almost too bright to look at directly.
He left it on the table.
Daniel found Mara standing beside him.
He knew her before he understood anything else.
Her hand was still in his, although they stood beneath an open sky, with no sign of the manor around them.
“Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
She looked down at their joined hands.
“Did we fall?”
He remembered trying to hold her. Beyond that, nothing.
Lindiwe stood a few paces away with Vale. Kane had one hand on Sal’s shoulder and was looking around for Elena.
They occupied a broad terrace overlooking the same city Daniel had glimpsed through the window.
People passed along a walkway below. Water moved through a shallow channel beside their feet, spilling over its edge into a pool on the next level. Buildings rose beyond it in shapes Daniel could follow with his eyes but could not quite understand how to build.
There were no familiar towers, no roads cutting between blocks, no skyline he could mistake for somewhere he knew.
Kane called Elena’s name.
A passing man continued without turning.
“She was beside me,” he said.
Lindiwe approached him.
“Jonathan isn’t here either.”
Sal looked up at Kane. The boy’s hand tightened around his amulet.
Kane crouched beside him.
“We’ll stay together.”
Daniel watched the man descend a shallow flight of steps. He had passed close enough to hear them, yet had shown no awareness of their presence.
Vale moved towards the walkway.
“Excuse me.”
A woman approached carrying a sleeping child. Vale stepped into her path, but she continued.
He moved aside instinctively, then watched her pass through the space his arm still occupied.
Mara drew nearer to Daniel.
The woman adjusted the child against her shoulder and walked on.
At first, Mara thought the woman and the next person they saw might be related.
Their eyes were slightly larger than she expected, set beneath broad brows. Their noses lay flatter against their faces, and their ears were small and close to their heads.
Then she noticed the same proportions in an older man seated beside the water, and in the children playing below him.
Their skin tones varied. So did their hair, their height and the way they carried themselves. A woman with dark curls laughed at something her companion said, putting a hand against his chest as he tried to answer. An elderly man stopped to let two children run past, then called after them with unmistakable irritation.
Mara could read their expressions.
That made the differences harder to dismiss.
Their clothing moved softly around them, layered without visible seams or fastenings. A sleeve changed from pale grey to a muted green as its wearer stepped into sunlight, so gradually Daniel was unsure he had seen it happen.
He looked towards Vale.
“Do you know where we are?”
“No.”
Vale was listening to the voices.
A word recurred in the conversation of two people seated near the pool. He repeated it quietly.
“Avar.”
Kane looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Sal found the animal before any of them noticed it.
It followed one of the children along the lower terrace, moving on four slender legs beneath fine tawny fur. Its ears were rounded, its tail long enough to curve above its back when it turned.
The child dropped onto a bench.
The animal pushed its narrow head beneath his hand, then rolled onto its back with its feet drawn towards its chest.
Sal smiled.
He went down the steps, Kane following, and crouched beside it. When he reached towards its fur, his fingers found no resistance.
The animal’s tail swept through his wrist. It continued watching the child. Sal withdrew his hand slowly.
“He can’t see me.”
Kane crouched beside him.
“No.”
“Is he real?”
Kane looked at the child scratching the animal’s belly.
“I think he was.”
Above them, something landed on the edge of the terrace.
Mara turned at the sound.
For a moment she took it for a bird. Then its long tail opened into a fan, and she saw small clawed fingers fold against the leading edges of its wings.
It tilted its head towards another creature perched farther along the stone. Their calls were low whistles followed by a dry, rattling note. Mara listened until they flew away.
They walked through the city together.
None of the people responded to them. Conversations continued when Vale tried to speak; machines followed their own tasks, and objects remained beyond their ability to move.
The six could still touch one another.
Daniel held Mara’s hand when the terrace narrowed. Kane lifted Sal onto a low wall to see over a garden, then put him down again. Each small contact reassured them that they were sharing something, however little they understood it.
They saw vehicles glide along an elevated way without visible wheels. A wall opened before a woman reached it, closing seamlessly behind her. In a garden, a machine no larger than a hand moved among the stems of a plant, tending each leaf.
Then a woman stopped beside the water channel and reached into empty air.
Her hand disappeared at the wrist.
Daniel stopped walking.
A small opening occupied the space before her. Beyond it lay a landscape washed in a different light, with low red vegetation beneath an unfamiliar sky.
Someone on the other side leaned towards her, exchanged a few words and handed her a piece of fruit.
She withdrew her arm. The opening closed, leaving nothing but the terrace behind it.
The woman took a bite and continued on her way. Kane looked at the place where her hand had vanished. Sal had stopped beside him.
“Where did she get that?”
No one answered.
Later—or what felt like later—the light changed.
Daniel could not remember watching the afternoon pass. One moment they were beside the water; the next, lamps shone beneath a covered walkway and the city had settled into evening.
A man sat at a table within an open room.
Before him lay a metallic bar.
Daniel recognised its rounded edges, the inscriptions along one side and the engraved figures.
“That’s it.”
Mara followed him to the doorway. The man rested two fingers against the bar. Its markings brightened. Around him, another room began to form.
Daniel saw a woman standing beside a window, turning towards someone outside his view. The man at the table watched her. A smile moved across his face before the scene changed to a child running along a path.
The child looked back and waved towards whoever had recorded the moment.
Lindiwe moved beside Daniel.
“He’s remembering.”
The man lifted his fingers. The images faded, leaving the small object on the table.
Daniel thought of Jonathan wrapping it in the cloth.
He had carried these lives out of the chamber without knowing they were there.
Sal noticed the Moon. He stood at the edge of the walkway, looking above the roofs. Kane followed his gaze. One by one, the others turned.
For the first time since arriving, Daniel saw something he recognised without needing to compare it with anything else.
The pale disc hung above the city. Dark markings crossed its face in the familiar uneven pattern, although it seemed larger than he remembered.
Mara leaned against him.
“That’s our Moon.”
Vale studied it for a long time.
The unfamiliar calls continued in the gardens below. Somewhere nearby, a family was talking over an evening meal.
Daniel looked from the Moon to the city beneath it.
He could not make them belong to the same place.
At the manor, afternoon gave way to evening.
The doctor examined them, returned during the night and remained in contact with the household. The Six breathed steadily, but none responded to voices or touch.
Elena refused to leave Sal.
Mattresses and bedding were brought into the sitting room. Lucía sat beside her; Gabriel stayed near Kane. Jonathan recorded the times, the examinations and every change he thought he saw.
The metallic bar continued to glow.
Its light neither strengthened nor faded as the night passed.
Almost a day after they had fallen, all six opened their eyes. Elena was holding Sal’s hand. He looked up at her, then towards Kane.
“The animal couldn’t feel me.”
Across the room, Kane had pushed himself upright.
“I know.”
Daniel turned towards Mara. She was already looking at him.
Neither needed to ask whether the other remembered.
Lindiwe sat up beneath her blanket. Vale remained still for a moment, his gaze finding the table.
The light inside the metallic bar went out.
Jonathan looked from one waking face to another.
“You’ve all been asleep.”
Daniel glanced towards the window. The light was much as it had been when they entered, but the trays beside the door and the bedding beneath him told a different story.
“How long?”
“Nearly twenty-four hours.”
Sal moved into his mother’s arms. She held him tightly enough that he stopped trying to explain.
Kane looked down at his side, then flexed his shoulder. The pain had not returned. Mara reached for Daniel’s hand.
“The woman,” she said quietly. “The fruit.”
“I saw her.”
“So did I,” Lindiwe said.
Jonathan lowered the pencil he had picked up.
Vale looked towards the bar.
“Avar.”
Daniel remembered the word spoken beside the pool, the man watching his recorded family, and the Moon above a city none of them knew.
Jonathan followed his gaze.
“That thing was lit the whole time.”
For a while, they watched it in silence.
Then Sal lifted his head from Elena’s shoulder.
“Can we see them again?”