The first thing Elyanna noticed was the smell.
Not rot.
Not filth.
Closed air.
The stale, unmoving weight of a room that had not been opened in days.
The memory formed around them in darkness — thick, suffocating — until a narrow line of gray light appeared beneath a door.
Dust floated in it like slow-falling snow.
There were no windows.
Only stone.
A bed too small for comfort.
A chair.
A washbasin with no water.
And on the floor, curled in the corner as if trying to take up less space in the world—
Ciri.
Older.
Fourteen, perhaps.
Too thin for her bones.
Arms wrapped around her knees, chin lifted with stubborn defiance that did not match the tremor in her body.
She was not crying.
That was the first knife.
She had already finished crying.
Sofia stopped breathing.
Inigo's ears flattened against his skull.
Serana made a sound that was almost a hiss, almost a sob.
Varric lowered Bianca without realizing it.
Cole stepped forward, as he always did when pain filled the air.
"She learned not to make noise," he said quietly.
"Hungry hurts less when you are silent."
The girl on the floor straightened when she heard the sound.
Not surprise.
Not fear.
Expectation.
She looked at the door.
Not at them.
Never at them.
The door.
Always the door.
Waiting.
Counting time by footsteps that were not there.
Her back shifted against the wall.
The fabric of her dress moved.
And beneath it—
Marks.
Dark.
Crossing her skin in brutal lines.
Some are old.
Some are new.
All carefully hidden beneath posture and stillness.
Serana turned away.
For a moment she could not look.
The vampire who had endured centuries of torment could not look.
"She's pretending," Cole whispered.
"Pretending she isn't hungry.
Pretending it doesn't hurt.
Pretending she is still noble, still proper, still worth something."
The girl stood.
Slowly.
Because standing too fast made the room spin.
She crossed to the washbasin.
Looked inside.
Empty.
She lifted her chin.
Turned away.
As if she had never expected anything else.
Then—
She spoke.
Not to them.
To the empty room.
"I will not apologize."
Her voice cracked.
She swallowed it down.
"I will not marry him."
Silence.
A long silence.
The kind that had taught her what came next.
She walked back to the corner and sat down again.
Carefully.
Back straight.
Hands folded.
A princess receiving judgment.
Elyanna felt something in her chest break.
This was not imprisonment.
This was training.
Training her to accept being sold.
To endure.
To be useful.
Sofia wiped her eyes furiously.
"That's it?" she whispered.
"That's the punishment? Starving a child?"
Inigo's voice was a low growl.
"I would like to meet this father."
Serana's answer was colder than death.
"You will not.
Because if I meet him, there will be nothing left to meet."
The girl's head lifted.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
For the first time—
She looked at them.
Not with recognition.
Not yet.
But with the distant, exhausted curiosity of someone hallucinating from hunger.
"You're not real," she said.
Not afraid.
Almost relieved.
Cole knelt in front of her.
"We are the ones who stayed in the garden," he said softly.
Her breath hitched.
Just once.
The door rattled.
All of them turned.
The sound was memory, not present —
but it carried the same dread.
Keys.
Footsteps.
Approaching.
The girl froze.
Every muscle locking.
Her hands clenched in her skirt so tightly her knuckles went white.
Her back straightened.
Her face emptied.
Mask.
Perfect.
Immediate.
"She learned fast," Cole said.
"Pain comes less when you look obedient."
The handle moved.
But the door did not open.
It never would.
Not here.
This was the waiting.
The longest part.
The part that broke her.
The air grew colder.
Not from the corridor.
From inside the room.
The shadow had found this place too.
Not as a figure.
As a voice.
A memory of a voice.
You will do as you are told.
The words echoed from nowhere and everywhere.
The girl flinched.
Only in her eyes.
Never in her posture.
Serana stepped forward.
"No."
The word was not for the girl.
It was for the memory itself.
The shadow deepened.
Not the father this time.
Something worse.
The idea that she was worth nothing unless she obeyed.
That her body was a coin.
That hunger was deserved.
Sofia moved to the bed and kicked it aside.
Breaking the careful arrangement of the room.
"This is not happening," she snapped, voice shaking.
"You don't get to sit here and starve."
The action was wrong.
The memory resisted.
The walls flickered.
The light dimmed.
Reality trying to snap back into place.
Elyanna stepped to the center of the room.
"This is her past," she said, blade drawn.
"But this—"
She gestured to the emptiness.
"—is not."
Inigo knelt in front of the girl and placed something in her hands.
An apple.
Not real.
Until she believed it was.
The girl stared at it as if it were a miracle.
"I didn't steal," she whispered.
"You were never supposed to," Inigo replied gently.
"You were supposed to be fed."
The shadow recoiled.
Hunger replaced by care.
Worth replacing shame.
The room shook.
The door vanished.
The voice faded.
Serana knelt behind the girl and wrapped her in her arms.
Not possessive.
Not protective.
Simply warm.
"You survived this," she murmured into her hair.
"You don't live here anymore."
The girl began to cry.
Not quietly.
Not properly.
Not nobly.
Ugly, shaking sobs that tore through the silence.
The first sound she had ever allowed herself.
In Skyhold, Ciri's body arched.
A ragged breath tore from her lungs.
Color flooded her cheeks.
Her fingers moved — clutching at the air as if holding something.
Back in the memory, the room cracked.
Light pouring through the walls.
The stone dissolved.
The bed turned to dust.
The girl still crying in Serana's arms—
but now looking at all of them with recognition.
"You came," she said.
Not disbelief.
Not surprise.
Certainty.
And this time—
She reached back.
The room collapsed into white.
The connection was held.
The path to the next memory opened.