Cane hit the grass at dawn and the sky was the wrong color. He knew his own world. He had spent his life hunting rumors of an empty throne, one built for shapeshifters who had ruled here and then vanished. He meant to claim it. Now he lay in a wet field under two moons he had never seen, and the ruined city he remembered stood whole and new on the hill. He stood. His body ached from the fall. The gold ring on his hand still held its ruby, warm against his skin. It was the one proof he carried that his blood came from the first of his kind. But there were no others of his kind here. Not one. He reached inside himself for the old feeling of change, and found it thin, like a rope worn to a thread. "You are early," a voice said. "Or very late." A woman sat on a stone root of a huge tree behind him. Its bark looked like carved rock, and its branches spread wide enough to shade the whole hill. She had violet hair and thin, bright wings that shivered when she spoke. She had not been there a breath ago. Cane was sure of it. "Who are you?" he asked. "I don't fully know yet." She tilted her head, studying him like a puzzle. "I woke the moment you struck the ground. As if the world made me to answer for you." Cane looked at the whole city on the hill and understood. "This is the past. My past. Ten thousand years back." "Yes." She rose and stepped closer. Her feet did not bend the grass. "And there are no shapeshifters here, Cane. Not yet. The throne you want is empty because no one has been born to fill it." She smiled, but her eyes were serious. "You are not their heir. You are their beginning." The words landed hard. If he had already lived among his people, then someone had made them first. He turned his ring toward her. "This proves I'm the progenitor." "It proves you will be," she said. "Right now it proves nothing. History has a shape. You broke it by falling here. If you do not set it right, your race is never born, and you unmake yourself." Cane closed his fist. He had come to claim a throne. Instead he had to build the bloodline that built it. Every wife, every child, every legacy he wanted now had to start with his own hands, in a world that did not know his name. "Then I begin," he said. "Show me where." The fairy held out her hand. Illusions bloomed around her fingers, small figures of many races bowing to a curly-haired king. "I will guide you," she said. "Every shapeshifter that ever lives will trace back to what you do next. So choose it well." Cane took her hand and started toward the city.

The road ended at the city gate, and Cane stopped there. Dark wood and black stone rose above him, taller than any building he knew. Warm light glowed in a hundred narrow windows. Guards in silver mail stood at the arch. They watched him climb the last of the hill, and their hands moved to their spears. He was a stranger here, six and a half feet tall, with a foreign face. No one had sent for him. No one knew his name. "Halt," the nearest guard said. "State your house and your business." Cane had no house here. His people would not exist for ten thousand years. He held up the ring on his hand, the gold band with the ruby at its heart. "I carry the mark of a bloodline older than this gate," he said. It was true and it meant nothing. The guard looked at the ring and laughed. "Bloodlines have names," the guard said. "Yours isn't in the roll. Turn around." The other guards stepped closer. Spears lowered. Cane reached inside for the change and found only the worn thread of it. He could not even shift his face to something they would trust. The air beside him shivered. Libra appeared, wings bright, feet not touching the stone. Cane had met her only once, at dawn, under the great stone-barked tree. She was the fairy the world had made to guide him. She looked at the spears without fear. "Wrong question," she told the guard. "You asked his house. You should have asked what he can show you." She lifted her hand. The air above the gate split open with light. A lion the size of a house stood in the road, three tails lashing, wide dragon wings spread over the guards' heads. It roared, and the sound shook the windows. The guards fell back. Two dropped their spears. It was not real. Cane knew her gift. But the guards did not. "He travels with an omen," Libra said, plain and flat. "Bar him, and you answer for it." The illusion faded. The road stood empty again. The guards looked from the fading light to the tall stranger and could not decide what he was. Fear had done the work that Cane's ring could not. An older guard came from the arch. He studied Cane, then bowed his head an inch. "You'll come before the council," he said. "They decide who enters, not us." He waved them through the gate. Cane walked under the black stone arch into the city. Lamps lit the street. People turned to stare at him. He was inside now, but not welcome, only watched. A summons waited, and a council of strangers who would weigh his every word. Libra walked beside him. "You're in," she said. "Now they all know your face. Fix it before you meet them."

The council hall stood at the city's heart, all dark wood and black stone, its tall windows glowing gold. Guards led Cane inside and left him on the floor below a curved bench. Twelve elves sat above him. Their faces were cold. Libra stood at his shoulder, wings folded, silent for once. He had reached the summons. Now he had to survive it. "You claim a bloodline," the eldest councilor said. "Show us its mark, or leave the city by dawn." Cane lifted the golden ring. The ruby caught the light. "This is older than your walls," he said. But the words fell flat, the way they had at the gate. The councilors leaned in, saw a pretty ring, and nothing more. One laughed under her breath. Cane reached for the change, for a face they might trust. The power slid through his fingers like wet thread. He held only his own borrowed shape. "A ring is metal," the eldest said. "Any thief can wear one. Prove your claim with more than gold." Cane had nothing more. Libra could not conjure a lion inside these walls; a false omen here would brand him a liar. He stood exposed. If they cast him out, he would lose his one path to the throne, and unmake his whole race. The great doors banged open. A seven-foot elf woman strode in, white hair loose, gold eyes bright even as they dimmed at the edges. She wore white and gold robes stained from the road. She did not bow. Cane had never seen her. But she looked at him as if she had known his face for years. "His claim is true," she said. Her voice was flat, without decoration. "I am Valera Goldriver. My eyes show me what comes. I have seen this man's blood fill an empty throne. I have seen a race rise from him." The eldest frowned. "Your sight is failing, Goldriver. The whole city knows it." "It is," Valera said. "Soon I'll see nothing. But I see this now, and I have never been wrong about a face." She turned her gold eyes on Cane, then on the ring. "Test him if you want. He wears the mark of a maker, not an heir. There has never been one like him. There will be, because of him." The councilors murmured. Valera's word carried weight her fading eyes had not yet spent. The eldest studied Cane a long moment, then spoke. "You may stay," she said. "On the seer's word, not your ring. If she is wrong, you both answer for it." Cane bowed. Relief and unease sat together in his chest. He belonged in the city now, but only as long as a blind woman's last visions held. Outside, Valera stopped him. "I saved you," she said. "Now you help me. A thief took my Lens. Find it before my eyes go dark, or my visions of you die with them."