Amirah smiled. It was a terrible smile, the kind that comes from having nothing left to lose.

She smiled, turned toward the distant lights of a village that no longer remembered her name, and walked home.

And the higher entities wept.

The Loom screamed. It was a sound that turned the air to glass and the glass to dust. But Amirah didn't flinch. She had already seen the shape of the lock. And she had already stolen the key—a tiny, ridiculous thing: the name of a star that the entities had forgotten they had named.

"We cannot," the Loom translated, vibrating her teeth. "We have never been small."