The myth was dissolving faster than Tempo Flux could fly through it. The sky above the old shrine peeled away in strips, showing the gray nothing behind. Tempo Flux beat their wings hard and clutched the small time engine to their chest. Inside its glass face, gears spun backward, trying to hold the timeline open a few seconds longer. On the altar ahead lay the relic they had come for: a bone whistle carved with a sun that no one alive still worshipped. Tempo Flux had crossed forty timelines to build one legendary artifact. A whistle from a sun-god cult would be the eighth piece. Every relic they gathered fit the next like a lock fitting its key. Without this one, the rest would not sing together. Without this one, the artifact would stay a pile of parts in their satchel. The pillars on either side crumbled into flakes of light. The floor sagged where the story forgot itself. Tempo Flux felt the pull begin at their ankles, that slow drag toward the unmaking, where things that never happened go. Their harness tightened across their chest on its own. The harness came from a timeline that no longer existed. It had pulled them out of six collapses before. It could not pull them out of a seventh if they were still reaching for the whistle when the floor gave. A small shimmer darted past their ear. The chrono fish had followed them again, fins flickering through three seconds at once. It circled the altar, then circled Tempo Flux, then circled the altar. Choose, its swimming said. Choose now. Tempo Flux dove. They snatched the whistle in one hand and slammed the time engine's lid with the other. The gears screamed. The altar dissolved under their fingers before they had fully closed their grip. Cold nothing licked up their legs to the knee. The harness yanked backward hard enough to crack a rib. Tempo Flux tumbled through the collapsing air, whistle clenched in their teeth, and punched the return glyph. They landed on packed dirt under a real sky. The shrine was gone. So was that whole timeline. Tempo Flux lay on their back and counted their fingers, then counted the whistle. Eight relics. One rib that would not stop grinding when they breathed. Beside them the chrono fish drifted in the open air, calm again, waiting. A shadow crossed the sun. Tempo Flux sat up too fast. High on the ridge above the dirt track stood a fairy in pale robes and a man in purple and gold, both looking down at the spot where a timeline had just closed. Luminara Starwhisper lowered her hand. Aldric Moonwhisper did not. The gods had not noticed the missing myths yet. These two had. Tempo Flux slid the whistle into their satchel and did not move, because whatever came next, it would not be the quiet escape they had planned.

Tempo Flux stayed low on the packed dirt while the two figures came down the ridge. Luminara Starwhisper moved first. Aldric Moonwhisper followed, one hand at his belt. Tempo Flux did not have the wing speed to outrun them with a cracked rib. They pressed a palm to the satchel. Eight relics inside. The whistle. Seven others. All useless until they clicked together in the right order, and Tempo Flux did not know the order. Force one wrong and the piece would break. Break one and the artifact would never sing. Luminara stopped a wing's length away. She did not draw. Aldric did not either, but his fingers stayed near a rune stitched into his sleeve. "You took a myth," Luminara said. "We felt the door close behind you." Tempo Flux sat up slowly and set the small time engine on the dirt between them, lid open, gears still shivering. A show of hands, sort of. "I took a whistle," they said. "The myth was already going." Aldric crouched. He looked at the engine, then at the satchel. "Eight," he said. "You have eight." It was not a question. Tempo Flux said nothing. Aldric touched the edge of the satchel with two fingers and the flap fell open on its own. The relics lay in a row, dull, waiting. Tempo Flux had tried to fit them three times on the trip back. Each time the pieces had shivered and refused. Each time a fresh crack had started along the bone whistle's rim. "You will shatter them," Luminara said. She said it like a fact she had already watched happen. "The order is not guessable. It is remembered." She reached into her sleeve and drew out a pinch of star-dust. She let it fall across the relics. The dust settled into thin lines between them, drawing a shape Tempo Flux had never seen. A sequence. Numbers, almost. A map from one piece to the next. The chrono fish drifted down and hovered over the dust pattern. Its fins flickered forward and back through the seconds, reading. Tempo Flux held their breath. The fish stopped at the third relic in the line, circled, then moved to the fifth. It was checking her work. It found nothing to change. "Why show me," Tempo Flux said. Aldric answered. "Because the gods will notice soon. When they do, they will come for the myths that are left. We would rather your artifact exist than the shelf be empty." He closed the satchel. "But you owe us a hearing at the council office. Before you assemble. Not after." Tempo Flux nodded once. The rib ground when they stood. They had the order now, drawn in star-dust on the dirt. They also had a debt, and a summons, and two witnesses who knew exactly what they carried.