Shogg knelt at the edge of the cracked asphalt, where the last light of dusk pooled in a shallow depression. Rain from an hour ago had left a mirror no wider than Alaric's palm. It had been walking—if the slow, undulating drift of its mass could be called walking—when the reflection caught its eye. Not the sky, not the distant hills. Something in the water looked back. The shape was wrong. Shogg's tendrils hovered at the rim of the puddle, careful not to break the surface. The thing in the water was dark, shifting, a knot of shadow that refused to settle into anything familiar. It had no edges, no face except two points of green light that stared up with the same confusion Shogg felt looking down. *Is that me?* The question arrived without warning, without precedent. Shogg had never needed to ask it before. It had simply *been*—a presence, a force, a pattern moving through the world. But this reflection suggested something else: that it could be *seen*, that it had a shape others perceived, that there was a version of itself that existed outside its own awareness. The tendril dipped. One thread of darkness touched the water, and the reflection rippled, broke apart, reformed as something new. A face, almost. A suggestion of features that dissolved before they could be named. Shogg pulled back. The water went still. The reflection returned to its shapeless vigil. From the edge of the street, a soft sound—a breath, a step. Nova stood at the corner, her hood pulled up, her sketchbook tucked under one arm. She didn't speak. She had learned that silence was the best companion for moments like this. Shogg's eyes lifted to meet hers. The green light was dimmer now, uncertain. "I don't know what I look like," it said. Nova took a step closer. Then another. She sat down on the curb, ten feet away, and pulled out her pencil. "I can show you," she said. The air between them hummed with something unspoken. Shogg's form rippled once, then stilled, waiting.