Judy walks through streets that glow like neon signs, looking for a girl who died thirty years before she did. The afterlife looks nothing like she expected — all sharp angles and bright colors instead of clouds or darkness. She doesn't know where to start. She turns a corner onto a street marked by a glowing sign that reads ANUBIS ST. The letters burn warm against the dark buildings. A thin black lion sits beneath it, ribs showing through patchy fur. Orange and pink light pulses under its skin like a heartbeat. It watches her with eyes that shouldn't be able to see anything at all. The lion stands when Judy stops walking. It crosses the cracked pavement and presses its shoulder against her leg, warm and solid despite looking half-starved. She touches its mane and feels the static buzz of neon. The creature turns and walks three steps toward a cluster of glowing sunflowers growing through broken concrete. It sits beside them and looks back at her. Judy kneels by the flowers. Their petals are too bright, edges traced in colors that don't belong in nature. The lion nudges one stem with its nose and a single bloom falls into her hands. She stares at the sunflower — Rayne's favorite — and knows with absolute certainty that someone left this here for her to find. The lion rubs its head against her arm like it's been waiting a long time to bring her this far. She doesn't know who sent it, but she's not walking blind anymore.

The lion lifts its head and sniffs the air. Its ears swivel forward. Then it stands in one smooth motion and bolts down the street, silent except for the click of claws on cracked pavement. The sunflower slips from Judy's hands as she scrambles to her feet. She runs after it. The lion leaves a trail of glowing sand behind it, orange and red specks that fade into the air like embers. Judy's lungs burn but she keeps running. She clutches the locket around her neck — the one she wore the day she died, the one Rayne gave her that last summer — and uses the pain in her chest to push harder. The lion turns a corner and she follows, her shoes slapping against pavement that cracks wider with each step. The trail of sand suddenly stops in the middle of an empty plaza. The lion is gone. Judy spins in a circle, searching, but there's nothing except the fading glow of sand specks settling on the ground. Her breath comes in ragged gasps. She let go of the sunflower and now she's lost the only thing that knew where to go. The plaza is silent. No movement. No guide. Then she sees it — a second sunflower growing through a crack in the concrete at the exact spot where the sand trail ended. She kneels and touches the petals. They're warm. The lion didn't abandon her. It brought her exactly where she needed to be next. She picks the flower and stands, looking at the buildings around the plaza with new eyes. Rayne left more than one marker. Judy just has to learn how to see them.