Dr. Sage Whitmore had been mid-sentence when the lecture hall dissolved. She had been telling her students that you never feel a liminal shift happen. She had felt this one. The floor had gone soft under her boots, her chalk had kept moving, and then she was standing on moss under a sky the wrong shade of green. That was three hours ago. Now she sat on the edge of a narrow bed inside a one-room shelter someone had walked her to, pushing her round glasses up her nose and trying to think like a professor instead of a woman who had lost her classroom. Someone here had pulled her across. Her own theory said so. Summonings left a signature on the summoner, and if she could find the signature, she could make them send her back. She just had to not die identifying them first. The door opened without a knock. The old man who had found her in the moss came in, robe brushing the sill. Aldric Silverweave. He had given her his name once and not repeated it. Behind him stood a blond fairy no taller than her forearm, arms crossed, wings folded flat. Lysander, the old man had called him. Neither looked glad to see her. "I need a name," Sage said. "Whoever pulled me here. I can undo it if I stand in front of them." "You cannot," Aldric said. "I can. Summoning leaves a residue. I've written papers on it." "Papers." He set a cup of something on the sill. "Confront the wrong practitioner and they will burn you where you stand. I will not point you at a door and hope." "Then point me at the right one." "No one summoned you, Professor." She stopped. "That's not possible. I was anchored to a lecture hall. Something reached for me." Lysander spoke for the first time. "The boundary is thinning. Aldric says so. You fell through a soft spot. No one called." "That's not how it works." "It is how it worked today," Aldric said. She stared at him. She had spent twenty minutes building a suspect list in her head. Every name on it was now useless. There was no sorcerer to confront. There was no spell to reverse. The blond fairy watched her face and did not soften it. "Then how do I get home," she said. "I do not know yet." Aldric picked up the cup and put it in her hands. "I know what tore the seam. I know it is still tearing. That is what I can tell you tonight." Sage looked down at the cup. Her hands were shaking. She had come into this room hunting a person. She was leaving it hunting a wound in the world, with no anchor, no colleagues, and one grizzled scholar who admitted he did not know the way back. "Start with the seam," she said.

Sage followed Aldric out of the shelter at first light. The old scholar walked ahead of her in his gossamer robe, brown eyes fixed on the moss. He had said little since dawn. He had said one thing that mattered. Something else had come through the seam behind her, and if they did not find it soon, the tear would open past mending. "How do you know something crossed?" Sage asked. She had to jog to match him. "The moss." He pointed without stopping. "Two sets of prints from where you landed. One is yours. The other is not." She looked down. Her boot prints ran clear. Beside them, a second track pressed deeper, four-toed, wider than her hand. "What is it?" "I will know when I see it. Walk quieter." A blue-haired fairy dropped down from the branches ahead and landed on a stump. Her hands were bandaged. Sage recognized her from the shelter last night, though they had not spoken. The weaver. Celestia. "It went east," Celestia said. "Toward the chasm. I saw the bracken bent." "How far?" Aldric asked. "Close. It is slow. It bleeds." Lysander came behind her on foot, wings folded. He nodded at Sage once. "You should stay back." "I brought it here," Sage said. "I'm coming." He did not argue. He turned and led them through the ferns. They found the creature at the lip of the chasm. It was the size of a large dog, grey, hunched, its skin wet where the boundary had scraped it raw. It was digging at the moss with those four-toed hands, and every scrape made the air behind it shimmer. Sage felt her stomach drop. She had read about residue. She was looking at it. "It is trying to open the way back," Aldric said. "It cannot. It will keep trying until the seam gives." "Can you kill it?" Sage asked. "No. Killing it here tears the seam wider." He looked at her. "It has to be walked back through." "By who?" "By the one who came with it." Her mouth went dry. "I can't cross back. You said the boundary won't hold me." "Not you. Your scent. Your shape in the world." He pulled a thread from his robe, silver, and held it out. "Celestia will bind this to it. It will follow the pull toward where you fell. When it reaches the soft spot, the seam will close behind it." Celestia was already unspooling thread from her palm. Her bandages darkened as she worked. She did not complain. She stepped close to the creature, looped the silver line around its foreleg, and jumped back before it could turn. The creature lifted its head. It sniffed. Then it went, dragging the thread west through the ferns. They watched until the shimmer in the air blinked shut. "The seam held," Aldric said. "That one. There will be others." Sage looked at her hands. They were empty. She was still here.