Saphira woke each morning to broken pictures. Once her visions ran clean, like water over glass. Now they came in shards. A burning ship. A child's hand. A door that would not open. She could not tell which shards were true and which someone had planted after the mirrors behind her eyes cracked. Someone had tampered with her sight. To find them, she first had to know which fragments were the lie. She had no record of what she once saw. So she went to the one person who did. The old woman kept a stone stall at the edge of the sacred marketplace. Hanging charms clicked above her head. A pot of pale-flowered vine glowed on its hook, soft as spilled moonlight. Dextric sat beneath it, blind eyes white as bone, her carved staff burning at the tip. She had recorded every prophecy Saphira spoke since childhood. She was the only keeper of the old words. "You smell like fear," Dextric said, not turning. "You never used to." "I need what I said before," Saphira answered. "Every vision. From back when they were whole." Dextric's hand found a bundle of knotted cords beneath the stall. Each knot held a prophecy in the old counting. She dragged her fingers along them and began to speak Saphira's own past words aloud. Saphira closed her cracked-mirror eyes. She let the new shards rise while the old woman recited. She matched them, one by one. The burning ship was true. She had spoken it years ago. The child's hand was true. The door that would not open matched nothing. Dextric's fingers stopped at the empty cord. No knot. No record. "That one I never gave you," Dextric said. "It is not mine. It is not yours." Saphira's breath caught. She pushed harder into the false shard. Behind the door she saw a face she did not know, watching her, waiting for her to look away. The planted vision was not random. It was a message left inside her own sight. "Someone put it there for me to find," Saphira said. Dextric's white eyes turned toward her at last. "Then they wanted you looking. A trap wears the shape of an answer, child." Saphira opened her eyes. She now knew the lie from the truth. Three false shards, all leading to the same closed door. Someone had not only broken her sight. They had built a path inside it and were waiting at the end. She stood. The charms swung as she turned to go. "Where?" Dextric asked. "To open the door," Saphira said. "Before whoever is behind it opens me."

Saphira did not go to the door. Not yet. First she had to learn who had reached inside her sight. The false vision had been planted among Dextric's cords. To touch those cords, someone had visited his archive. Dextric would know the names. So she walked back through the marketplace, past the swinging charms and stone stalls, to the old man beneath his glowing vine. "Someone came to your cords," Saphira said. "Someone handled them and left the lie inside. I need to know who." Dextric's blind eyes stayed white and still. His staff burned at the tip. "I cannot see faces, child. Fingers came and went. I heard them. I did not know them." His hand tightened on the staff. "Whoever it was moved like they knew my counting." That was the wall. Dextric kept the records, yet he was blind. He could not name the visitor. Saphira pressed her fingers to her cracked eyes and felt the dead end. A soft hiss came from the stones behind her. She turned. Bare footprints smoked in the frost on the marble floor. Each one blackened and steamed. The girl who left them wore a frost-white gown. Her hands were dark as wet soil. Her hair drifted upward, as if the sky pulled at it. Saphira knew her. Zypsie. Goddess-born, always drifting between the sky and the ground below. She sought Saphira's visions like everyone else, but she never met the oracle's eyes. "You're chasing a thief," Zypsie said. She crouched by the cords, careful not to touch. "I was here. Days back. I came for a reading and waited by his stall." Saphira stepped closer, keeping her gaze low. "You saw who handled the cords." "I felt them," Zypsie said. "The floor. Everyone burns a print if they stand long enough near me." She pointed at a stall's stone base. There, pale in the dust, sat a single scorched footprint that was not hers. Small. Booted. Pressed deep, as if the visitor had knelt at the cords. "Not a servant's boot," Zypsie said. "Temple sole. The kind worn in the sky places." Dextric leaned forward. "A sky boot. I heard buckles that day. I thought it was a pilgrim." Saphira stared at the print. The blind keeper could not see the visitor. But the goddess-born had marked the ground where the visitor knelt. The trail did not lead to a face. It led higher. To the temples above, where sky-soled boots were worn. "Then I don't need a name," Saphira said. "I need a temple." Zypsie stood. Frost curled away from her heels. "I walk between here and there often. I can take you up." Saphira looked at the scorched print one last time. The door in her vision had a watcher behind it. Now she knew the watcher wore sky boots. The trap was not below. It waited above.

Zypsie could carry Saphira up. But up to what? The sky held many temples. If Saphira climbed without knowing which one issued the intruder's boot, she would walk straight into the trap she had already glimpsed. She needed the exact temple before she left the ground. "We can't just climb," Saphira told Zypsie. "The wrong door kills me. Tell me what marked the boot. The stitching. The buckle. Anything." Zypsie crouched over the scorched print on the stall base. She traced the shape in the air, careful not to touch. "The sole was cracked. Old leather. New temples don't wear cracked soles." She looked up, gold eyes bright. "This came from a dead place. A ruin." A small hiss came from the vine above Dextric's stall. A purple crystal creature slid down the leaves. It was no bigger than a cat, its scales catching the light like cut glass. It skittered to the print and sniffed. Then it chirped and darted toward the marketplace edge, toward open sky. "It smells the burn," Zypsie said. "They chase my prints. This one followed the intruder's trail here. It remembers the way back." Saphira kept her cracked eyes low. "Then it can lead us to the exact temple." Zypsie held out her soil-dark hand. The little drake climbed up her arm. "Hold to me," she said. "Don't look down." The ground fell away. Saphira felt cold air and the pull of the sky. She kept her gaze on Zypsie's scorched heels, never on the drop. The crystal creature chirped and pointed with its snout. Zypsie followed it, drifting higher, until stone rose out of the clouds. A temple stood there, broken. Its spires had cracked and fallen. Faded carvings covered the walls, worn thin by centuries. Weeds pushed through the steps. Most of its windows gaped like empty sockets. No pilgrims. No priests. A dead place, just as Zypsie said. The drake landed on the top step and went still. It stared at a single tall arch in the center of the ruin. A doorway. The wood was shut. Saphira's breath caught. She knew that door. She had seen it in the false shards planted in her sight. The closed door. The watcher behind it. "This is it," she whispered. "The trap was built here." Zypsie set her bare feet on the stone. Scorched prints bloomed under her heels. "Someone still keeps this ruin," she said. "Look. The dust on the steps is swept." Saphira looked. A clean path led from the arch to the edge, where the boot had launched downward. The temple was abandoned, but not empty. Whoever had reached into her visions lived behind that swept door. She no longer climbed blind. She had the temple. She had the door. Now she had to open it and face the watcher who had shattered her sight.