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Elias sidles over, his voice light but frayed at the edges. “Well, that’s a plot twist. Anyone got a map? Or maybe a sacrificial lamb?”

Silas snorts, flopping down on a chunk of broken marble. “I’ll volunteer. I’ve always wanted to be immortalized as the idiot who broke reality.”

Lucien ignores them, his eyes fixed on me like he already knows the thing none of us want to admit.

“You knew,” he says quietly.

I meet his stare, unflinching. “I suspected.”

“Of course you did,” he mutters, voice brittle. “Of course you knew.”

Luna’s at the edge of the room now, watching us, her shoulders wound tight, but I don’t look at her.

Because she did what none of us could.

She ended it.

But she also trapped us here with the ghosts.

Lucien exhales sharply, raking a hand through his hair. “We can’t stay.”

“No,” I agree. “We can’t.”

“There’s still magic in these bones,” Lucien says after a beat, looking around the cathedral like it’s a puzzle he can force to bend. “This place existed before Branwen. There’s power here. A fracture.”

I shake my head. “Power, yes. But nothing stable. We’d need a tether, something strong enough to bridge what’s left.”

His gaze flicks to Luna without hesitation.

Of course it does.

Because she’s the only one who could do it. But asking her to bleed herself dry to get us out…after everything? I glance at her then, finally, and her eyes meet mine—clear, steady, but so damn tired. She’s already given enough.

Lucien’s jaw sets. “We find another way.”

There is no other way.

But I don’t say it.

Not yet.

Because we’ve all bled too much tonight, and there’s still one more door to pry open. One more sacrifice to make.

The cathedral feels smaller now that she’s gone. Or maybe it’s us—fractured, battered, scattered across the marble like chess pieces mid-war. The echoes of Branwen’s last scream still hum in the bones of this place, stitched into the cracks of the stone, but there’s something else too—a quiet, almost imperceptible emptiness that settles in the absence of her madness.

And then there’s Lucien, standing too still, too quiet, as if he could force the weight of leadership back onto his shoulders like it hadn’t almost destroyed him. His eyes flick between the rest of us and the doorway like he’s already somewhere else.

Silas’s voice cuts through the thick quiet, casual and crass, like he hadn’t just fought for his life. Like he isn’t still bleeding under that grin.

“Well,” Silas says, brushing marble dust off his torn shirt, “I vote we get the hell out of this haunted cathedral and drink ourselves into oblivion. Anyone want to come watch me embarrass myself in front of every bartender in that village?”

Elias huffs beside him, mouth twitching like he’s trying not to smile. “Pretty sure you do that sober, Veyd.”

Silas clutches his chest like Elias’s words wounded him, eyes theatrically wide. “You wound me, brother. Truly. And here I was planning on dedicating my next shot of whiskey to your brooding ass.”

“Add a shot for me,” Caspian mutters quietly from across the room, his eyes still locked on the spot where Branwen’s ashes used to be. His voice scrapes low, but there’s something resolute beneath it now, something heavier.

Silas snaps his fingers, pointing at him. “That’s the spirit! Look at us—one big dysfunctional family trauma bonding over alcohol.”