Lucian didn't speak as they ascended from the mausoleum. The spiral stairs felt longer this time, like the crypt had buried something deeper inside him—heavy and hot.
The Grimoire, silent after all this time, vibrated in his satchel. His cane's silver tip struck each cobblestone with confidence and finality.
At the top, the annex's doors opened without touch. The air within the preserved library was still and reverent—as if the very books inside knew how he'd changed.
Gethra stayed behind, disappearing down the stairs. "You know where I'll be," she'd said. "When the bell tolls."
They returned to the suite in the King's Quarters without a word. Rosa trailed behind Lucian, her face drawn and pale, her stitched lips trembling faintly with effort.
"Are you all right?" He asked, already dreading the answer. "Just tired," she said quietly. "I could never say that in the palace," Rosa added. "Sometimes I made up chores just so I could sit down for a little bit."
Her hands were shaking, not from nervousness--but because they needed to be restitched to her wrists. The decay slowed down, but not stopped. There was a seam forming in her voice, as well: one that didn't belong.
Inside, the hearth still glowed. Lucian moved like someone possessed, setting his cane against the wall and unfastening the satchel. The Grimoire dropped onto the table with a thud. Its pages opened on their own, like a mouth hungry to speak.
A new chapter had begun writing itself.
"Mortician of Memory. Waker of the Efficiency Loop."
Lucian stared at the ink as it spread, letter by letter. The script wasn't in his handwriting—it came from somewhere deeper, older.
His fingers brushed the book's edge. "It's time."
He pulled the scrolls given to him by the prince. The final words of Alaric Montegeau. Notes on rites meant not to cleanse or preserve—but to release. Incomplete, fragmented, written in the margins like confessions between screams.
He spread them across the table. They smelled of dust and pain.
Lucian dipped his pen into dark ink and began to write.
+
He worked in silence. For hours, maybe longer. He wasn't sure. Time didn't behave well in Staesis.
The rite took shape slowly, stubbornly. The Grimoire pushed back, resisting him at first—pages twitching, attempting to overwrite his lines with older glyphs.
But Lucian held firm. Each time the Grimoire wrote, he struck the text and changed it.
"This is my rite," he muttered. "Not Alaric's. Not the Queen's. Mine."
The room answered with a faint pulse of heat. The page settled, accepting his decision.
For now.
He drew a wide circle on the floor with bone chalk and ground ash from the vault below. At its center, he placed the shattered jawbone from the humming laborer—its edges darkened with ritual ink, its silence now a scream no one heard.
Beside it, he laid a folded paper. Written in his blood:
"No more heirs. No more tombs. Let the burden end with me."
And then, his hand hovered over the cane.
He pressed it gently into the center of the circle. The silver tip sank slightly into the stone—like the earth accepted it. Like it remembered.
The cane began to hum, a low, vibrating sound like breath caught in a throat.
Lucian staggered back.
"Not yet," he whispered. "Not until she's safe."
He turned toward the cot. Rosa lay still, bundled beneath a thin quilt, her hands clasped over her chest as if in preparation. Her eyes were closed, but not asleep. Her body was calm, but not living.
The decay was shifting now—no longer spreading, but twisting. The flesh beneath her jaw looked… wrong. Like it didn't know what shape to hold.
Lucian knelt beside her.
"Alice," he said quietly. "Can you hear me?"
Rosa didn't stir. But something within her flickered—just a twitch behind the eyelid. The spirit he'd seen bound inside Rosa's unraveling body—Alice Brown, the girl sacrificed in the last ceremony—was still there.
He could feel her. Dim, flickering like a candle placed beneath a wet cloth.
He clenched his fist.
"This isn't a resurrection," he said. "It's a release."
The exorcism circle was drawn beside the bell ritual, a mirror of its structure, though thinner, more delicate. He adjusted the runes by hand, carving them into the floor with a silver stylus.
When he lit the final wick, the lines pulsed violet and began to glow faintly. The Grimoire's pages turned of their own accord, stopping on a blank sheet that bled text across it:
[EXORCISM RITE – TARGET: VESSEL ENTANGLED WITH ANOMALOUS SOUL]
Ritual Warning: Soul overlap detected. Vessel may fragment. Anchor recommended.
Tether Status: Weakening.
Vitality Decay: Accelerated.
Soul Integrity: Inconclusive.
Lucian muttered, "It'll be enough."
But he wasn't sure.
He glanced out the window. The fog hadn't lifted—but the laborers moved slower now. As if sensing something in the air. The streets weren't empty, but they weren't normal either. Shovels scraped stone without rhythm. Barrels clattered and were not retrieved.
The machine of Staesis was stuttering.
He returned to the room and checked the final component: a single strand of Rosa's hair. It curled like dark thread on the page beside Alice's name.
Lucian sat cross-legged before the circle and began the chant. The words didn't come from memory. They came from somewhere beneath it—like speaking a language half-forgotten in childhood, but always known in the bones.
His voice wavered at first.
Then steadied.
The circle pulsed.
Rosa's body flinched once.
A wind blew through the sealed chamber, and the candle flames bent inward.
She opened her eyes.
Rosa sat upright—not with clarity, but with confusion. Her eyes darted from the circle to the candlelight to Lucian.
"I—what is this?" she asked. But the voice wasn't hers.
It was higher. Younger. Unsure.
Lucian froze.
"Alice?" he said.
She blinked.
Then began to cry.
Lucian reached for her hand, but stopped. He didn't know which soul he would touch. Her hands trembled, and her voice cracked, speaking words Rosa had never used.
"I didn't want to be here," she sobbed. "She screamed—and I went quiet. And then I woke up in her body."
Lucian's throat closed.
"She… protected you," he said. "Even when she was unraveling."
Alice nodded slowly, as if remembering something from a dream.
"I think she liked you," she whispered.
Lucian didn't respond.
Instead, he finished the rite.
The circle flared one last time.
Then dimmed.
And Rosa collapsed, limp—but intact. Sleeping. The stitching of her mouth loosened, as if a voice had finally been allowed to escape.
Lucian exhaled.
He stood slowly, legs trembling.
"It's done," he said aloud. "One soul saved."
But the Grimoire flared again.
Not saved. Freed.
The bell must still ring.
The loop continues to resist.
Lucian nodded grimly.
He turned toward the other circle—where the bell's rite awaited. The cane still hummed in the stone. The jawbone still trembled beneath the ash.
"I'll ring it," he said. "Not as an end. As a beginning."