They found artifacts scattered like punctuation: a broken pocket watch whose hands spun backward, a postcard written in a hand that matched Mira’s grandmother’s. Stories hooked into each other: a composer who drowned his sadness in nocturnes, a midwife who read futures in the pulse of newborns, a teacher who once taught a mapmaker how to measure courage. The city below collected these souls without judgment, arranging their remnants into a collage of longing.
