She pressed her palms to the dust. Not to sculpt, but to . She thought of the duck with two heads, how it hadn’t needed to fly. It had just been . The dust trembled. The city screamed—in her father’s voice, in her own.

It just needs to want .

“Dad?”

The city dissolved.

She awoke on the mountain’s slope, the iPad cracked beyond repair. In her lap: a wooden duck, two heads, one wing. It wanted nothing.

That night, she tapped the icon. The app opened to a blank canvas. No tools. No grid. Just a pulsating dot. When she touched it, the dot bit her. Blood welled, not red, but . The iPad’s camera activated on its own, scanning her face. Then the Sculptor spoke. “I remember you. You were in the womb when I first learned to feel hunger.” The screen dissolved into her father , sculpted mid-scream, his mouth a tunnel of teeth. Behind him, a city of bone rose from a desert of teeth. Nomad’s voice dripped like molten glass: “Trade me a memory. I’ll carve you a way out.” Mara’s thumb hovered. She remembered her father teaching her to whittle wood, how he’d laughed when she carved a duck with two heads. “Art doesn’t have to make sense,” he’d said. “It just has to want .”