"Lights are falling!" someone screamed.
"Get back! Move!" the grip of a grip guy bellowed.
The rig groaned like a giant twisting. Metal screamed. A spotlight slammed down and shattered the staged glamour into sparks.
"Cut! Cut!" the director shouted, but the stage didn't wait for orders.
"Susana, left—" a crewman warned.
A shadow moved faster than anyone expected. Forest Xu pushed forward, not like a man checking status but like a wall closing over someone.
"Forest!" Matilde shouted.
He slotted his body between Susana and the falling rig. His suit didn't rip. He didn't shout. He barely blinked.
Glass and light struck his shoulder. Susana's hand flung back. Forest's arm wrapped around her like a shield. He turned and looked at Matilde without moving Susana away.
"Are you okay?" he asked Susana with a voice that held no room for anyone else.
"I'm fine," Susana replied, voice soft, fingers curling into his sleeve.
"Medic!" someone cried.
Matilde's world narrowed to a sound and a color: a flash of red silk she had never owned, a lantern throwing shadows in a corridor that did not exist in this life. A woman's throat cut, a child's scream. The vision cut like a photograph shoved into hot water.
"Madam Howell!" a PA shouted, distant.
Blood painted the stage edge where Matilde's head had hit. The lights made it look cinematic and wrong.
"Hold her head. Don't move her neck," a medic
