The Gwennan finally stopped deep in the forest around Clawdiff.

Not on a road.

Not anywhere sensible.

It rolled between old trees, crushed through a curtain of wet bracken, and came to rest in a hollow where the branches met overhead thick enough to hide the sky.

For a moment, nobody moved.

The engine ticked.

Rainwater dripped from leaves onto the roof.

Far behind them, Clawdiff glowed through the trees in blurred gold and smoke, the cathedral bells still faint enough to pretend they belonged to another world.

Silver was the first to break.

He lifted his arcbracer.

“Mother.”

Static.

He tried again.

“Mother, respond.”

Nothing.

His jaw tightened.

He stepped toward the side window, angling the bracer toward the distant city as if sheer aristocratic irritation might improve the signal.

“Caedrix Arcturus. Umbranox. Please respond.”

Static.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each failed attempt stripped something from his face.

Ray watched him from the bench where Pitch had forced her to sit after she tried to stand twice and nearly introduced herself to the floor again.

“She got out,” Ray said.

Silver did not look at her.

“You don’t know that.”

“She’s Umbranox.”

His mouth twisted.

“For once, that is not as comforting as everyone keeps pretending.”

He tried the comm again.

Nothing.

At the back of the Gwennan, Celeste burned.

Not with fire exactly, but with a feverish heat that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than flesh. Mezzo could feel it where her head rested against his shoulder, a strange, concentrated warmth radiating from the centre of her chest as though her core had gone half-molten under her ribs.

Every now and then she twitched in his arms, lashes fluttering, lips moving around scraps of thought that did not belong together.

The van smelled of blood, sugar dust, engine oil, wet fur, and the sharp medicinal tang of whatever Plum had hastily pressed to Celeste’s face.

Inside, the mood was worse.

Celeste was conscious only in fragments.

Her eyes opened now and then, but they did not quite focus. When they did land on someone, it was with the vague, startled softness of a person waking in the wrong century.

“I remember that market,” she murmured suddenly.

Hughes, seated across from her with all the awkward patience of a man who had expected zombies today and got prophecy instead, raised a brow.

“What market, love?”

“The one with the roses,” Celeste whispered.

Her voice had gone dreamy, distant, as if she were looking through the van walls and into somewhere sunlit and long gone.

“All the awnings were white and red, and there were bowls of sugared pears, and little glass bottles hanging from strings... and the whole square smelled of roses. So many roses.”

A faint crease touched her brow.

“There was music. Harps, I think. And someone was crying by the fountain but trying not to.”

Hughes let out a short, rough chuckle.

“All right then,” he said, humouring her. “Sounds fancy enough.”

But the humour thinned fast.

Because Celeste kept talking.

She described a military checkpoint swallowed in smoke. A signal tower split open by artillery. A line of silver-armoured soldiers falling near a shattered bridge while the river below ran black with ash.

Hughes’s expression changed.

Slowly.

The amusement drained out of him altogether.

He leaned forward.

“Where did you hear that one?”

Celeste blinked at nothing.

“It was so loud,” she murmured. “And the banners caught fire before they hit the ground.”

Hughes went very still.

That day.

That day had only two survivors.

Him.

And Aurora Lovelace

No one else had lived long enough to tell it.

“Celeste,” Hughes said carefully, “look at me.”

Her eyes drifted toward his, but only halfway, as though they had to travel through several memories before reaching the present.

“Who told you about that battle?”

She frowned, confused by the question.

“No one.”

“You couldn’t remember it.”

“I do.”

Hughes’s jaw tightened.

“You weren’t there.”

Celeste’s face crumpled slightly, not from pain this time but from the effort of trying to hold onto certainty that was beginning to slip under her fingers.

“I...” She swallowed. “I remember the smoke.”

The van went very quiet.

Then, just as suddenly, Celeste whispered, “There’s a crystal city under Caerfaen.”

Mezzo looked down at her.

“There’s a what now?”

Her eyes had gone glassy again, focused somewhere far beyond him.

“A city,” she repeated. “Sleeping under the stone. If I find the sceptre, I can raise it.”

Her breathing hitched.

“Raise it to fight the Void.”

Mezzo stared at Hughes.

“What on earth is she talking about?”

Hughes rubbed a hand down his face, deeply unhappy.

“She’s delirious.”

That was the sensible answer.

It was also, increasingly, the least convincing one.

Ray shifted closer despite Pitch’s warning hand hovering near her shoulder. She pressed two fingers lightly against the loose tunic covering Celeste’s chest, careful not to touch too close to the centre of her core.

The heat made her flinch.

“Mezzo,” Ray said quietly. “Her core’s hot.”

He looked down sharply.

“Hot how?”

“Too hot.”

Celeste made a small sound and turned toward Ray, then away again, like she could not decide which world she belonged in.

Her lips moved.

At first the words came in Bardic.

Old, fluid, musical syllables none of them were expecting, spilling from her in a soft fever-murmur like she had forgotten which language belonged to now and which belonged somewhere older. The cadence of it was beautiful in a way that made the hair on Ray’s arms stand up.

Silver stopped trying the comm.

He turned slowly.

Arcade’s whole body went rigid.

C.H.I.P. dimmed its lights.

Then, just as abruptly, Celeste slipped back into Common.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

This time she sounded lucid enough to break their hearts.

“They’re mine. My memories are mine.”

Her voice trembled.

“They’re real. I remember them.”

Mezzo’s face tightened.

He shifted her closer against him, one hand bracing the back of her head while the other rubbed small circles between her shoulders, as if touch alone might keep her from flying apart.

“Easy, sunshine.”

But Celeste was already unravelling again.

“I remember them,” she repeated, more weakly now. “So why don’t they make sense?”

No one answered.

Because there was nothing to say that was not cruel.

Hughes stood.

The movement was slow, heavy, and much older than him.

Ray looked up.

“Hughes?”

“Need air.”

He stepped out of the Gwennan before anyone could stop him.

Outside, the forest swallowed him in damp green shadow.

Inside, the silence did not last.

Arcade turned on Skye so fast the poor lad flinched.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Skye, still pale from the confession array, stared back.

“I was thinking he was my dad.”

“You wandered off in the middle of a cathedral raid!”

“I didn’t wander off. I saw him.”

“That is wandering off with emotional decoration!”

Skye’s ears flattened.

“You would never have let me talk to him.”

“Correct! Because he is a walking red flag in a priest collar!”

“He’s still my father!”

“He strapped you to a truth chair!”

Skye’s face flushed with hurt and fury.

“I know that!”

Arcade stopped.

Only for half a second.

But Skye kept going, voice cracking.

“I know what he did. I was there. But before that, he was talking to me. He was actually talking to me, and I thought maybe—”

His voice broke.

“Maybe he still cared.”

Arcade’s expression flickered.

His anger did not vanish.

It had nowhere safe to go.

So it folded itself into something sharper.

“And look how that went.”

Skye looked like he had been slapped.

Mezzo’s head snapped up.

“Arcade.”

Arcade rounded on him.

“What?”

Mezzo’s voice came low.

“Not now.”

Arcade’s eyes flashed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is now inconvenient? Should I schedule the ‘don’t get abducted by your evil dad’ chat for later?”

Skye shoved himself upright.

“You don’t get to decide what I feel!”

“No, apparently I just get to save you from the consequences!”

“That’s not fair!”

“No, the cathedral full of mind-control collars was also not fair, but here we are!”

“Enough,” Ray said.

It was not loud.

It did not need to be.

The whole van went still.

Ray was sitting up straighter now, though her face had gone grey beneath the fur at her temples.

Pitch sat beside her, one hand hovering near her elbow without quite touching.

“You are not allowed to command people while concussed,” he said mildly.

Ray glared at him.

“I command better concussed than most people do conscious.”

“True,” Pitch said. “But your left eye is currently arguing with your right.”

Ray blinked.

Then frowned.

“Is it?”

“Only a little. Very charismatic.”

She stared at him.

Despite herself, despite the blood and the bells and the fact that she had been knocked unconscious by a manic inquisitor with an electric scythe, the corner of her mouth twitched.

Pitch looked pleased in his quiet, exhausted way.

“There. Brain still works.”

“Barely.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Topsy was sitting on the floor near the front, surrounded by slates, backup drives, and three different cables she had apparently pulled from places nobody wanted to identify.

C.H.I.P. hovered over her shoulder.

“File cluster seven copied.”

“Copy it again,” Topsy said.

“You already copied it twice.”

“I have anxiety and storage space.”

“Reasonable.”

Her fingers moved quickly, but for once there was no bounce in her. No joke ready to leap out. No delighted chaos.

Lumina noticed first.

She sat near Skye, one hand still loosely holding his sleeve, as though worried he might vanish again if she let go.

“Topsy?”

Topsy did not look up.

“Mm?”

“Are you okay?”

That made Topsy pause.

A bad sign by itself.

She looked through the front windshield into the forest, but her eyes were not really on the trees.

“They’ll look for us.”

Ray watched her.

“The Church?”

“Yeah.” Topsy swallowed. “And the Council. And maybe Godiad. And maybe everyone with hats and opinions.”

Mezzo gave a tired snort.

“That narrows it down.”

Topsy’s ears drooped.

“All those people near the Tree,” she said quietly. “The rescued ones. The little ones. Bonbon. The people who only just got somewhere safe.”

The van went still again.

A different kind of still.

Topsy looked at Ray.

“If they think we’re hiding there, they’ll go there. They’ll search it. Or attack it. Or say it’s for everyone’s safety and then do it anyway.”

Ray’s face hardened.

Hughes’s words hung over them from earlier.

They’ll attack Hiraeth.

Silver looked out at the forest.

His bracer remained silent in his hand.

“No,” he said quietly.

No one knew whether he was answering Topsy, Hughes, or himself.

Topsy looked down at the backup drives.

“I know we had to leave. I know we couldn’t go back.”

Her voice got smaller.

“I just hate that they’re there without us.”

Lumina leaned against Skye without thinking.

Skye let her.

Arcade looked at the floor.

For all his rage, all his teeth, all the defensive static still snapping under his skin, he had no clever answer.

None of them did.

At the back of the van, Celeste stirred again.

A faint glow pulsed under the loose tunic.

Mezzo looked down instantly.

“Sunshine?”

Her eyes did not open.

Her lips moved.

This time, only one word came out.

Soft.

Frightened.

Ancient.

“Karithiel.”

Arcade looked at him sharply.

“C.H.I.P.?”

The little robot hung in the air above Celeste, motionless in a way that made every instinct in Arcade’s body go cold.

“Programming is strained,” C.H.I.P. said.

His voice had lost its usual bright edge.

Arcade swallowed.

“Define strained.”

“The truth array interfered with a new neural connection forming in Commander Astallan’s core.”

Ray, still pale and concussed, lifted her head.

“A what?”

“A neural connection,” C.H.I.P. repeated. “For later instructions.”

The van went dead quiet.

Arcade’s expression changed slowly.

Carefully.

Very carefully.

“What instructions?”

C.H.I.P. bobbed once, as if the answer were obvious.

“To restore connection to the Weave, silly.”

Nobody moved.

Then C.H.I.P. added, “But we need to open the Wells first. Otherwise it will be too much.”

Hughes, halfway through the van door, stopped.

Not turned.

Stopped.

Something in those words hit him like a voice from a room he had thought was empty.

Silver looked at C.H.I.P.

Then at Celeste.

Then at the faint glow burning under the loose tunic.

“What does that mean?”

C.H.I.P. drifted lower.

“It means her core is attempting to prepare for a sequence it cannot yet complete. The interrupted connection is producing heat, memory bleed, and unpleasant spiritual confusion. Very rude of the torture chair, frankly.”

Arcade’s mouth had gone dry.

“Can you stop it?”

“Stabilise it,” C.H.I.P. corrected. “Stop is such a dramatic word. Also no.”

Mezzo tightened his hold on Celeste.

“Is this going to hurt her?”

“It is already hurting her.”

“Then do it.”

C.H.I.P. extended two tiny hard-light manipulators.

Arcade stepped forward instinctively.

Then froze.

His eyes flicked to Celeste’s face.

To her closed eyes.

To the glow beneath her skin.

To the memory of gold eyes looking through a camera and telling him what to do.

He backed up half a step.

“I can’t.”

No one mocked him.

No one even breathed too loudly.

C.H.I.P. floated down instead and placed his small hard-light hands above Celeste’s core, not touching skin, hovering just over the heat shimmer.

Blue-white symbols flashed under the loose tunic.

Then gold.

Then old Bardic script curled outward like an interface waking beneath glass.

The markings were not quite writing.

Not quite circuitry.

They moved in rings and branching stems, luminous and delicate, as if someone had taught prayer to behave like machinery.

Diana made a sign to the Artist without seeming to realise she had done it.

Crystal saw and did the same with shaking fingers.

The symbols brightened.

Celeste gasped once.

Mezzo flinched.

“Easy, easy—”

The heat in the van changed.

Not vanished at first.

Softened.

The burning pressure that had rolled from Celeste’s chest began to sink inward, pulled back beneath her ribs in slow pulses. The Bardic symbols tightened into a small ring over her core, flashed once, then disappeared.

C.H.I.P.’s lights came back brighter.

“Stabilisation achieved. Mostly. Commander Astallan should no longer cook the upholstery.”

Mezzo let out a breath that sounded dangerously close to a sob.

“Good. Great. Fantastic. Love not cooking upholstery.”

Arcade did not say anything.

He stared at the place where the symbols had been.

Then he turned.

Walked to the van door.

Opened it.

And stepped out.

He kept walking.

C.H.I.P. watched him go.

“Oh well,” he said. “He is having another breakdown. He has been having a lot of them lately.”

Nobody laughed.

Outside, Hughes stood among the trees with his hand braced against the side of the Gwennan, staring toward Clawdiff like a man watching a storm choose its first house.

Behind them lay Hiraeth.

Clawdiff.

Everyone they could not protect by going home.

Ahead lay dark forest, no plan, and a girl burning with memories that were not supposed to be hers.

For now, that was all they had.