The next morning came without urgency.
No thunder. No reckoning. Just light, soft and indifferent, spilling across the basin and filtering into Ravine's narrow room.
She sat at the edge of the bed for a long while, unmoving, still wrapped in the heaviness of the days before. Her breath fogged the window. The ruins outside remained unchanged, indifferent to grief or clarity.
But something inside her had shifted.
No revelation. No peace.
Only decision.
She dressed slowly and stepped out into the corridor. The scent of damp stone and dried herbs greeted her. Familiar now. Anchoring.
Downstairs, voices echoed.
In the far room, Arana stood among other alchemists, sleeves rolled up, gesturing toward charts and notes laid out across a long table. Her tone was calm but focused, the kind that carved pathways through even the densest silence.
Ravine lingered in the doorway.
She felt out of place, half-formed.
Kaelen passed by, a basket of dried root in his arms. He noticed her, paused, and offered a crooked smile.
"You don't have to say anything," he said. "You can stay here for as long as you need. Or leave tomorrow if you must. Just... don't let your thoughts make you smaller than you are."
Ravine blinked at him, then nodded.
His smile softened. He continued down the hall.
She looked back at Arana.
Still steady. Still there.
Ravine walked into the room.
Arana glanced up, and something in her expression shifted. She didn't smile. Didn't question.
She only said, "You're here."
"I'm ready," Ravine replied.
They left together.
Arana's room was smaller than Ravine expected. Tidy. A single table covered in pressed flowers, tools, old journals. A single bed, unmade. A window looking out toward the southeastern ridge.
In the far corner: a narrow chest. Iron-latched. Worn.
Arana walked to it and retrieved a ring of keys from a nail by the door.
"I've been holding these," she said. "Since before we knew who you were. Since we thought memory could be outwaited. Turns out memory is less like a wound, and more like a tide."
She unlocked the chest.
Inside were six small objects, each wrapped in cloth.
Ravine stepped closer.
The cloth trembled slightly in the light breeze from the window.
Arana unwrapped the first: a piece of polished obsidian, etched with runes.
"Lysa's," she said.
Then a folded parchment sealed in violet wax.
"Tovin's last score."
Then a copper pin shaped like a sprouting leaf.
"Eryn."
A smooth, spiral-carved ring of bone.
"Niva."
A tiny architectural model, half-formed, made of silver wire.
"Kaesa."
And last—a small mirror pendant, its surface cracked.
Arana didn't say the name. She didn't have to.
Ravine reached for it.
Her fingers brushed the broken mirror.
And the air folded. Light bent.
The flashback began.