The stench of blood hit Ayla's nostrils as turpentine soaked her sketchbooks—not the mustiness of aged paper, but the cloying sweetness of Lucas' hydraulic fluid from three years ago. Max juggled a lighter engraved "For All Unfinished Drafts" against the fire hydrant's red paint.
"Burn them thorough." His flame cast wolf-shaped scorch patterns on the studio wall. "Want me to chuck Caged Moon in as a funeral offering?"
Ayla's fingertips brushed the prom night sketch—Lucas' profile shadow lines smeared with his blade-cut blood. When flames consumed the page, smoke coalesced into silver threads weaving his collarbone's briar sigil midair.
"Back!" Max's cane hooked her belt. The incinerator's viewport cracked into spiderwebs as cerulean flames hummed with metallic transmutation. Ayla slammed onto blistering tiles, her scorched hand branding micro-constellations.
Firetruck sirens wailed as ash writhed like ferrofluid. Coughing metallic-tasting smoke, Ayla saw silver particles assembling a wolf's visage through tears. Lucas' mechanical right hand emerged from cinders, her lost silver bookmark gripped in his mangled index finger.
"It's absorbing thermal energy!" Max's cane-tip thermometer beeped. "Core temp breaching 3000°C—"
The bookmark clicked into the wolf's eye socket. Liquid metal geysered from the sculpture's orbit. Ayla's right arm caught droplets, skin erupting in vascular silver vines. When firefighters breached the door, all anomalies vanished—only a life-sized wolf head remained, fangs clutching half-burnt sketches of Lucas sleeping.
In the 3 AM hospital corridor, a nurse fainted mid-bandaging. Monitors showed abnormal platelet levels; under microscopes, the silver vines were nanobot chains. Max flickered a metal shard from the sculpture's base—etched with Lila's genetic code.
"Phoenix flames demand sacrifices." He tilted the shard moonward. "But no one specified which version of you gets consumed."
Ayla ripped off her cast. The silver vines now reached her crescent scar. An encrypted email arrived—security footage of Lucas carrying her unconscious form from an incinerator, the Neumann brand glowing on her nape.
Rain drummed a coded rhythm. Ayla scored her silvered arm with the bookmark. Bioluminescent blood projected star charts on walls. Max's cane jabbed northwest—the wolf sculpture's eye sockets oozed in gallery cameras, mucus coalescing into human silhouettes.