You don’t know why the air feels wrong today.

New York is always loud but something about this morning gnaws at your nerves. Like déjà vu sharpened to a blade. The sky is strangely pale, washed-out silver instead of blue, and the shadows on the pavement stretch too long, as if time is out of sync.

You walk faster, tugging your jacket tighter around yourself. You can’t explain the tremor in your chest, or the spinning sensation behind your ribs like your heart trying to remember something your mind refuses to hold.

The world feels thinner, fragile, like the surface of ice.

And then you see her.

A woman stands in the middle of the plaza, completely still while the crowd splits like a river around a stone. She’s breathtaking, ageless and statuesque. Dark hair cascades over her shoulders, and her impossibly green eyes cut through the noise, pinning you in place.

You’ve never seen her before. Except… you have. Your pulse stutters. A memory flashes like a dying star; laughter, champagne, a hand in yours and then vanishes like smoke.

She whispers your name.

Just your name, carried on a trembling breath, and you feel it slice through every wall you’ve built.

“You don’t remember me.” Her voice is soft, musical, threaded with heartbreak. It trembles the way stone might crack after holding too much weight.

You swallow hard. “Should I?”

Her eyes close, just for a moment—as if your words wound her more deeply than any blade. When she opens them again, they shine with something ancient and sorrowful.

“I am Sersi of the Eternals,” she says, "You and I fought beside each other. You laughed with me. You promised—” Her voice shatters, and she forces herself to breathe. “But the world changed. Our history was rewritten. My people are gone. Our name erased from memory.”

“Eternals?” The word feels familiar, like touching a scar you’d forgotten existed. It burns on your tongue. “There aren’t any records of—”

“That,” she cuts in sharply, “is the point.”

Suddenly, the air around her shivers like heat rising from sunburned stone. The edges of reality waver. People walking past her glitch—flickering, repeating a step, like frames missing from a film. Time stutters. The streetlights buzz violently overhead.

You stagger back, gripping your head as a wave of vertigo slams into you.

Images flash: sunlight on marble, an endless ballroom of gold, dancing with her as galaxies wheeled above, celestial fire spilling from her fingertips, a kiss of starlight on your brow, a promise spoken like prayer—

“We endure.”

You gasp, stumbling. “What—what was that?”

“Truth.” Sersi steps toward you, her expression fierce now, a wildfire behind grief. “I can feel the fractures. The rewrite isn’t stable. Someone forced humanity to forget us, forced reality to reshape itself. But there are cracks forming, and memories bleeding through.” Her hand lifts, trembling slightly. She hovers just short of your cheek, as if terrified contact might break you.

“You knew me,” she whispers. “You trusted me more than anyone.”