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But I can’t be sure. Her face keeps blurring in front of me. Pale eyes, a straight nose and lips pursed in a disapproving line…

She smiles maliciously. "Do you? Still confused, I see. That’s disappointing. But you know exactly who I am, Rowan. I’m the lovely woman who gave you music all those years ago so you could play your precious Noctis.”

I stare at her face, trying to force the pieces together through the fog clawing at my thoughts.

Wake up.

My mind goes all those years back, to the market and the blaring horns, to the Ward and the warnings and that merchant.

To the music that destroyed my youth. The music Angela Virel somehow knew.

"How do I know you?" I manage.

A sharp slap cracks across my face, and my vision blurs.

"Wrong answer."

Cold crawls through me as the memory finally crashes back properly—the market in Düren, the damaged music sheet, the woman standing beside the stalls watching me far too closely before disappearing back into the crowd.

And Light, now that the fog is finally lifting, I can see her exactly as she stood in that market all those years ago.

She smiles like recognition is exactly what she was waiting for.

An old Noctis stands near the wall with cracked varnish and newly replaced strings, familiar enough to make something ugly twist through me the second I see it.

Pain rings through my skull as the woman crouches in front of me again, pale eyes fixed on my face like she’s trying to carve the answer straight out of my head.

"You burned the page," she says. "Stupid little boy."

My throat tightens. I still remember the fire swallowing the paper while I stood there convincing myself it was the only way to keep everyone safe.

“Do you have any idea how many years I wasted trying to make that cursed music give up its secrets?” Her voice sharpens. “And talented little Noctis players don’t forget melodies like that, do they?”

Cold slides through me. “I don’t remember anything.”

The guard’s fist crashes into my ribs.

I release a broken sound and try to curl forward, but the rope at my chest keeps me upright.

“Liar.” She grips my jaw and forces my head back. “I know you still hear it in your head. Play it.”

One of the guards cuts the ropes binding my wrists and shoves me toward the waiting Noctis. I wince as pain shoots through my hands the second the tension releases, blood rushing back into fingers that likely went numb hours ago.

I can’t stop shaking long enough to hold the bow properly.

“Angela hid everything inside those compositions,” she continues, pacing in front of me and the Noctis. “Routes. Money. Leverage. Enough power to bury families if the wrong people ever learned how to read what was hidden between the notes.”

I stare at her through the blur in my vision. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“No. You just carried it around half your life without realizing what you had.” Her laugh sounds tired. “While I spent years burying people, buying silence, burning records, and tearing apart half of Sero trying to keep it away from the people who wrote it in the first place.”

“I swear I don’t know anything.”

Something furious flashes across her face. “You were never supposed to leave Düren.”

“And that’s why you brought me back?”

I’m certain now that’s where we are, back in the place I spent my whole life trying to escape.