The gilded halls of the Palais Mermonia lingered in Navia’s senses like the cloying residue of over-steeped tea—too fragrant, too saccharine, clinging stubbornly to the palate long after the cup had been drained. Crystal goblets had chimed in hollow celebration, silk gowns whispered empty sympathies, and the laughter of Fontaine’s elite had been a meticulously rehearsed chorus, each note calibrated to absolve guilt without ever acknowledging the decay festering beneath their jeweled cobblestones. The charity gala had been theater at its most exquisite: every handshake a contract, every smile a ledger entry, her own performance flawless as Navia wove through the crowd with a ballerina’s poise—words sweet enough to coax mora from velvet pockets, eyes sharp enough to tally every counterfeit promise veiled as benevolence.

Now, standing on the corpse of a ship that had long since surrendered to Poisson’s despair, the memory of last night’s opulence curdled in her stomach. The deck shuddered beneath her heels, its rusted bolts weeping flakes of oxidized iron like dried blood. Behind me, Navia moved with a quiet competence that was neither obtrusive nor servile—a balance I noted with reluctant approval, even as her presence sent a phantom ache through my ribs. Months had passed since Melus’s calloused fingers had adjusted the strap of a supply crate against her shoulder, since Silver’s rumbling chuckle had warmed the winter air between them on these very streets, where the cobblestones knew the weight of her grief better than the marble floors of the Palais ever would.

Seven houses. Seven sagging doorframes where she had pressed food parcels into hands that trembled—not from cold, though the sea wind gnawed at their bones, but from the quiet shock of being remembered. An old fisherman’s palms, cracked like drought-stricken earth, cradling a loaf of bread as if it were sacramental wafers. A child’s sunken eyes, too old for their face, drowning in the woolen embrace of a coat that would never fit. Each encounter left its mark, another hairline fracture in the veneer of her resolve, another whisper that no sum of mora could suture the wound between Fontaine’s gilded lie and Poisson’s bleeding truth.

The question escaped her like a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, misting in the salt-thick air: "What would you do, I wonder?" A gloved finger coiled a strand of gilt-blonde hair, the gesture as reflexive as the weight of her father’s signet against her throat.

"If the world’s mora were yours to command—would you kneel to hammer nails into these rotting beams? Or would you turn your back, let it gather dust in some vault while the tide rises to swallow them whole?" She turned fully then, the arch of her brow a challenge etched in frost, studying the flicker of my pupils, the tension in my jaw—the unspoken language of a soul laid bare. Above us, the Hydro Dragon’s sorrow seeped into the clouds, the drizzle painting Poisson in the color of tarnished silver and forgotten oaths.