Two months passed.
Not quickly. Not slowly. The way time moves when everyone is waiting for something and no one knows what.
Lucian threw himself into the search. Every morning, every night, every hour between. He stood in the garden or walked the walls or sat in the empty room Althea had given him, and he reached. He pushed his awareness across realities, across dimensions, across the gaps between what existed and what didn't.
Cael helped.
The voice in his head had been quiet since the awakening, watching, learning the new shape of things. But when Lucian asked for assistance, Cael responded. Not with words, always with data. Streams of signatures, patterns, echoes. Things that felt familiar. Things that felt like her.
They followed those streams.
World after world. Reality after reality. Each time, the trail went cold. Each time, Lucian arrived somewhere new, scanned everything within reach, and found nothing.
