Elias closed the stall later, when the lanterns had guttered and the market was a place for ghosts to practice illusions. He put the empty vial back on the shelf, wiped the counter with a cloth that had seen better fortunes, and felt a small tremor of something like hope.

They both heard the footfalls first — hollow and careful — then the creak of a door that no one had expected anyone to open. From the deeper part of the market, shadows convulsed and a figure came. He was clothed like someone who had been living in other people’s names, a cloak patched with small flags of other lives. His eyes searched the stalls until they landed on Qos Wife3.

He stepped closer, and the fragrance curled between them. It did strange things to memory: not rewriting it, but gilding the rough places. He blinked, and the world slid into a sequence he had avoided — the roof where he’d once leaned with a girl who could find a joke in any locked door, the small boat they’d pushed off into a lake so black it swallowed the stars, the promise made then and half-broken later like thin glass. The scent did not plead; it only held a mirror. You can see what you cannot deny, it said without speaking.