Siena paces the small circle of light cast by the Stasis Candle, her movements restless, like a caged animal. The exhaustion is plain on her face, but it's overruled by a fierce, driving need to speak, to unload the horror she's been holding in.
"They moved with purpose. They herded us," she says, her voice low and intense. "Not like animals driving prey, but like soldiers flanking an enemy. They were trying to separate us. My partner, Ronan... he was trying to draw them off, to give me a chance to escape. He told me to run."
Her gaze drifts to the floor, to the spot where she had been hidden. "I ran. I got to this building. That's when I saw him."
Flynn and I exchange a look. I know who she's going to say before she says it. A cold knot tightens in my stomach.
"He wasn't like any Dweller I've ever seen or read about," she continues, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. "He was just... standing there. In the middle of the street. As if he was waiting for me." She describes him perfectly. The long, violet hair. The silver eyes that held no bestial fury, only a cold, calculating intelligence.
"He didn't attack. He just... watched me," she says, hugging her arms around herself. "He smiled. Then he raised a hand, and the shadow-things, the ones that were chasing Ronan... they stopped. They turned. They all just... melted. Not into smoke, but into that... that soot. It was everywhere."
She looks around the room, her gaze filled with a fresh wave of revulsion. "He spoke. His voice was... calm. Reasonable. He said...something bizarre."
"Bizarre?" I can't help but ask it, even though reminding her of my existence earns a dirty, suspicious look from her.
"...How does a cat feel when a rat devours it." She says, her eyes unfocused. "That's what he said. Just...that. And then...he turned and walked away."
Flynn frowns. "...That's it?"
"...The Gloom Dwellers swarmed the city after that. So quickly I barely had any chance to react. I saw the light snuff out from the Exorcist Candle I'd given Ronan and I lit my own." She gestures at the flickering flame. "It's the only thing that's kept them... or that soot... from getting me."
"What about the other villagers...?" Michael asks. "Did they just..."
"What do you think happened to them?" She snapped, staring down Michael. "I tried my best, but if I hadn't used a Stasis Candle I'd have met the same fate as everyone else." Her expression is a mess of exhaustion, fury, and failure.
"...So he just said a nonsense sentence and then left?" I ask, trying to think through the obvious and immediate question. "But... why did he do that?"
Siena turns her green eyes to me, and they burn with a cold intensity. "Why does he do anything? Who is he? What is he? We've never seen anything like this before, not in the history of the Order. A talking, humanoid Dweller is a myth, a ghost story."
She crosses her arms and stares out the window.
"The Order must know of this. We have to go back. We have to warn them..." She pauses. "...Where is the rest of your group, then?" Her gaze drifts back to us.
There's a long silence. It's Michael who finally breaks it, pushing his glasses up on the nose with a trembling hand.
"There...is no rest of the group," he says, his voice barely a whisper. "Not anymore."
Siena turns slowly to face him, her expression blank with incomprehension. "What are you talking about?"
Flynn lets out a long, shuddering breath. He looks older suddenly. "The Order... The Order is gone."
The word hangs in the air. Siena just stares at him, her green eyes wide. She doesn't seem to understand. The concept is too large, too monstrous to fit into her exhausted, grief-stricken mind.
"Gone?" she repeats, her voice a hollow echo. "What do you mean, 'gone'? On a mission? Scattered?"
"We mean gone," I say, my voice flat and hard. "We mean destroyed. Wiped out. We're what's left. A handful of students. And one Classmaster. Hiding in a crypt two hundred years dead."
The effect on Siena is immediate and devastating. The hard-won composure, the professional soldier's mask, shatters. She stumbles back a step, her hand flying to her mouth to stifle a gasp. The blade she still holds slips from her fingers, clattering to the wooden floor. The Stasis Candle flickers wildly as her concentration wavers, the darkness in the corners surging forward hungrily.
"No," she whispers, shaking her head in blind denial. "No. That's not possible. The wards... the Citadel... it's impregnable."
"It was that Dweller." Flynn's voice is grim, stripped of all its usual boisterousness. "The one with the purple hair. He led the attack. A coordinated strike. While the Classmaster was distracted." Flynn's gaze slides over to me, just for a fraction of a second.
"He overwhelmed the wards," I pick up, my own voice flat with the memory. "He did... something. We don't know what. We weren't there."
I can only guess at what happened.
While we were on that island, they attacked.
And I don't know why. Why they didn't wait for us to return. I only know that it happened. That it had to be that humanoid's doing to overwhelm the Order when they had their guard down. That it has to be connected with the fact the island had a humanoid on it.
But I can't be certain.
But...given the fact the humanoid showed up here, too, it seems like it's not a coincidence.
It has to have been him.
Siena doesn't move. She doesn't speak. She just stands there, her face a porcelain mask of disbelief. I can see the gears turning in her head, trying to reconcile the impossible reality with everything she has ever known, everything she has ever believed in. The Order of Light, the eternal bastion against the darkness, gone. It's a truth so profound it threatens to crack the very foundation of her world.
The Stasis Candle gives a final, desperate sputter and goes out.
The darkness can't come any closer. I don't let it do so.
But the meaning behind the stasis candle sputtering out feels deep anyway.
Flynn scrambles to immediately light his own candle in its place. Which is - initially, something I find odd. After all, Flynn of all people should know it isn't necessary. But...after a moment, and a direct look over his shoulder at me, I realize...
It's because we'll never convince this woman to come back to the crypt if she knows I can control the Gloom.