Lumiere found them in what must once have been a receiving room.

  The stone archway was oversized, built for bodies rger than any living person. The same scale carried inside: a long table that would have seated a dozen First Men comfortably. Chairs with backs like shields. A hearth rge enough to dominate the far wall.

  Seraphine sat in a chair too big for her, legs swinging without conscious thought. Evelyn stood near the doorway, arms folded, posture taut and watchful. Rocher sat bent over in a corner, elbows braced on his knees, his head bowed.

  They all looked up at once.

  Lumiere had meant to gather herself first, to find an appropriate face to put on. Instead, her feet carried her in with the same restlessness they had through the brutal stretch back from the clock tower—with Cire's limp weight split between her and Evelyn.

  Now she stood in the doorway and realized, betedly, that she was flushed. Her breath came uneven. Not for exertion this time, but the afterimage of things she would rather not have seen.

  Seraphine's eyes narrowed, not unkindly. "How did it go?"

  Lumiere shut the door behind her with careful control. The tch caught with a soft click that sounded too loud in the room.

  She shook her head.

  "No—" she said, and hated how thin her voice sounded. She cleared her throat and tried again. "No improvement. Not in any meaningful sense. I did what I could to assess her condition without aggravating it."

  Evelyn's gaze cut sharp as Lumiere crossed the room.

  "It is unlike any affliction I have treated or seen," Lumiere said.

  She stopped at the table and pced both hands on its edge, grounding herself against the cold stone.

  "It's like... Cire is present behind gss," Lumiere continued. "She looks at you. Sometimes she even tracks movement. But there is no comprehension. No response. When I spoke to her, she did not react to her name. Light, sound, prayer... nothing."

  Seraphine's mouth tightened. A muscle in Evelyn's face jumped.

  Rocher lifted his head a fraction, then winced and pressed his fingers harder to his temples.

  Lumiere finally allowed herself to look at him.

  There were no wounds, not exactly, but there was a rawness to the way he held himself, as though his bones had learned a new weight and had not yet decided how to bear it. His eyes were clear enough to focus, but his gaze was unfixed, drifting in small increments that made Lumiere think of someone standing too close to a bright fme.

  "How's the headache?" Evelyn nudged.

  Rocher gave a strained nod. "It still feels like someone is ringing a bell inside my skull."

  "Any nausea?" Lumiere asked automatically.

  "It's fine," he said, lowering his head again. "Just... Cire."

  She nodded. Even if he wanted to lie down, there was no pce for him to do it.

  The camp could not be used again.

  What remained of it was scorched and broken, the stone itself torn and gouged as if something had raged through with no regard for direction or restraint. Tents were reduced to ash and twisted frames. Lanterns y shattered. The ground was bckened in wide arcs, pitted and cracked.

  Evidence of Seraphine's battle, against a Rocher who could not respond to reason.

  There was nothing to salvage, and nowhere left to stand watch without exposing them to the open streets.

  So they moved.

  The building they chose y close enough to reach without carrying Cire far, and solid enough to be defended. It had clearly been inhabited once. Furniture remained in pce, oversized but intact, buried beneath a thick skin of dust that spoke more of age than abandonment. It had taken them time to make it usable again: sweeping, hauling, clearing space.

  Cire had been pced in the only bedroom.

  They stripped it of anything that could be used to harm herself or others. None of her tools. Nothing with weight or edges. Only a bed, a bnket, water, and light enough to see by. The door was kept closed, but not barred. Enough to give her some sembnce of privacy.

  It was the best compromise Lumiere could manage between safety and dignity.

  It did not feel like enough.

  Rocher made a faint sound that might have been a question, but it dissolved into another wince.

  Evelyn shifted, weight moving to the balls of her feet. "A little headache doesn't seem too bad. Sera, why can't we do what you did with him?" She jerked her chin toward Seraphine. "Why can't we do it now, with Cire, and be done with this?"

  Seraphine's expression went ft with fatigue. "Because I am not a miracle worker. And because you don't understand what you're asking for."

  Evelyn's voice was steady, but there was an edge to it now. "Expin it to me then."

  Seraphine reached into her sleeve.

  Lumiere tensed reflexively at the movement. So did Evelyn.

  The object Seraphine produced was small and dark, smooth enough to catch the nternlight in a thin gloss. It sat in her palm like a stone.

  "You mean this?" Seraphine said, holding it up.

  Evelyn's shoulders tightened.

  Lumiere understood why. She hadn't seen Corveaux's orb used firsthand, but she had heard enough from Cire and Seraphine to know what it had done to the Forest. It was destruction incarnate, of the most devastating kind: the inversion of structure.

  Evelyn's voice lowered. "Put that away."

  Seraphine didn't, turning it in her hand instead. "Don't worry," she said. "This is not the same as His Highness's. It may be based on the same principle, but it's tuned differently. Made to target demonic mana only."

  "Then..." Evelyn muttered.

  Seraphine shot her a look. "It's still a prototype," she said. "Which is why I won't simply fire it at our convenience."

  Evelyn's hands flexed once.

  Lumiere stepped up. "Seraphine, please," she said, "tell us pinly."

  Seraphine exhaled through her nose. "It doesn't destroy the infectious vector," she said. "Not at the source. But the infection uses demonic miasma as fuel, and the orb burns enough to weaken its hold. For the moment, the person can think again, as long as there is something left of them to think with."

  Rocher lifted his head and looked at it with grudging fear.

  Seraphine continued, "If there is not—if the demonic mana is the only thing propping up the host's mind—then burning it away will not free them. It will empty them."

  Silence settled in the room.

  Lumiere's fingers tightened on the edge of the table again. "So you waited," she said softly. "For Rocher to reach a certain threshold first."

  "I fought him," Seraphine said, matter-of-fact. "To force him to resist. To exhaust the part of him that couldn't be reasoned with. I waited until he demonstrated enough crity that I believed his mind would remain even if the fungus lost its grip."

  She shifted the orb in her hand, rolling it once, as if it were a coin and not a weapon.

  "It was still a gamble," she said. "If I had fired too early, the miasma would have been snuffed out and there would be nothing left. He would have been a drooling mess. We can't risk that with Cire."

  Rocher's jaw tightened. "Wait... in other words, you felt it was fine to risk that with me?"

  Seraphine looked at him. The corner of her mouth ticked upward. "You become a drooling mess anyway when it comes to Cire," she said. "So I figured it wouldn't have made a difference."

  Evelyn snorted.

  Rocher looked like he wanted to retort, but the effort caused a fresh wave of pain to wash over him, and he leaned back instead.

  "There may be no other recourse," Lumiere continued. She bit her lip. "I could not recover any antidote. Only the raw ingredients Cire requested. Whatever she intended to do with them, only she knows."

  Evelyn's gaze snapped to her. "She left no instructions?"

  Lumiere hesitated, then reached into her coat. She withdrew a piece of parchment, folded twice, and pced it on the table.

  "She wrote this before..." Lumiere admitted. "Before she lost herself entirely."

  Evelyn unfolded it with careful fingers. Her eyes tracked the lines, then narrowed. "Are these supposed to be words?"

  "It is her script," Lumiere said. "The one she used to write in her journal with."

  Evelyn slid the parchment toward Seraphine. "Can you make sense of it?"

  Seraphine did not reach for it immediately. She stared at the parchment like it was a bde held out hilt-first.

  Lumiere watched her face and saw calcution there, something heavy behind the eyes. Seraphine was weighing not comprehension but consequence.

  Evelyn's impatience rose. "Seraphine."

  Seraphine finally took the parchment and gnced at it. The orb remained in her other hand, cradled loosely, as if she had forgotten she was holding it.

  "I can't," Seraphine said finally. "Not without being her."

  Evelyn huffed. "Then we have no choice. We have to anchor her the same way. Get her to that threshold. Then fire your orb."

  She turned. "How was it that you got there, Rocher?"

  Rocher shifted in his chair. "I don't remember much," he said, voice thick. "Before I came back, I was thinking about Cire. That's about all that I can recall."

  Seraphine nodded. "A strong enough stimulus can force a host to surface," she said. "If only briefly. If we can get Cire to do that, even for a moment, then something will remain when we burn away the miasma. Her mind would have something to cling to—something to rebuild around."

  Rocher's brow furrowed. "What kind of stimulus?"

  Seraphine's stare went ft. "What do you mean, what kind? You, obviously."

  Rocher shook his head once, pained and certain. "I might be a little... preoccupied with her," he said, choosing the word like he hated it. "But she's not like that. She knows restraint."

  The room went still.

  Seraphine stared at him as if he had spoken in the wrong nguage.

  Evelyn looked like she was deciding whether to strike him.

  Rocher blinked, confused by their expressions. "What?"

  Seraphine spoke first. "You really are dumb when it comes to Cire."

  Rocher's mouth opened, then shut. He looked genuinely taken aback. "That's..."

  "You are her axis," Evelyn said. "Whether you realize it or not. I've never seen a person so utterly devoted to someone else."

  Seraphine nodded. "And I've never seen her more open than when she was in the Forest. When she was with you."

  Rocher blinked.

  Lumiere leaned in. Whenever she'd asked, Cire had waved it off. But it was increasingly apparent: the Forest wasn't just a pce in their shared history—it was a fault line. Whatever had happened there had changed the terms of every choice that followed.

  Evelyn sighed. "Although that in itself might be a problem."

  Lumiere looked at her.

  "I only saw the tail end of it," Evelyn continued. "But from what I could tell, that retionship was rgely physical—at least at the beginning. It'd be near-impossible to stop things from snowballing from there."

  Seraphine nodded slowly. "The infection is not fully cured. There's a risk that if Rocher engages... like that... he repses."

  Rocher's ears reddened, and the fact that he was capable of it under that weight of pain did not help.

  Lumiere's face burned as well. She was suddenly grateful for the dimness of the room, for the way the nternlight softened edges and hid the worst of her embarrassment.

  She swallowed, and forced herself to speak. "We do not have the luxury of delicacy," she said. "If Cire cannot be brought back, we may lose everyone. Those padins. Our chance at the Guardian trial. Not to mention—her."

  Rocher looked between them, then away. "But I don't remember any of it," he said, quietly now. "Nothing of what happened in the Forest. How am I meant to surface memories I myself don't have? I wouldn't even know where to begin."

  No one answered him at once.

  Even Seraphine hesitated, her gaze dropping briefly to the orb on the table, as if measuring how much truth it could burn away without destroying what remained.

  Finally she sighed, long and tired. "There may be a way. To cheat."

  All three of them looked at her.

  Seraphine turned the orb once more in her palm. Then she set it down on the table with care, as if ying down something that could not be taken back up without cost.

  "I mentioned earlier that Cire has never been more open than she'd been in the Forest," Seraphine said.

  She swallowed once. "She told us something. In confidence. Just me and Rocher."

  Seraphine hesitated, the edge of humor gone from her voice.

  And in that pause Lumiere understood that whatever came next was not meant to be shared at all. Her stomach drew inward, slow and cold.

  Seraphine's eyes moved from Evelyn to Rocher, then to Lumiere. She held their attention without trying.

  "The world isn't what you think it is," Seraphine said. "And Cire is not the person you think she is either."

  Lumiere felt the hairs along her arms rise, a subtle, involuntary reaction.

  Seraphine took a breath.

  And began to recount Cire's past, and the truth of this world.