Sofia cupped the pendant in her palm. The stone was cold. She waited. Nothing happened.

“You’re trying too hard,” the old woman said. “You’re trying to fix it. That’s not the work. The work is to listen .”

“It’s dead.”

“What did you do?” she whispered.

She was on her way to her grandmother’s apartment, the one that smelled of ginseng and old paper. The call had come three days ago: Come home. There’s something only you can fix.

Her grandmother clicked her needles. “You’re a Lee. And a Sofia. And a Sapphire. That’s three kinds of fixing.”

Sofia sighed and sat cross-legged on the floor. She pulled out the pendant first. The sapphire was the size of her thumbnail, set in tarnished silver. Once, her grandmother had told her it was the first stone ever mined by their ancestor, a Goryeo-era artisan who believed gems remembered everything they witnessed.

Her grandmother’s building stood in a pocket of Flushing where time moved sideways. Neon signs in Hangul and Mandarin flickered above fish markets and karaoke bars. Sofia climbed four flights of stairs, her sneakers silent on the worn linoleum.