The moon hung full above Valdorne, draping the city in a hush of silver. From the shadows of the stone colonnade, Tessara stepped forward, her presence quiet as the night wind.
"Laverna," she said softly, her voice a ripple in the stillness.
The assassin turned. She had been sharpening her jamadhars beneath a guttering torch, the rhythmic sound of metal against whetstone a lonely cadence.
"Couldn't sleep," Laverna said. Her voice was flat but tired, shadows haunting her amber eyes.
Tessara's blindfold shimmered faintly in the moonlight. "Nor should you—not until you let the silence speak. Come. I want to show you something."
There was no resistance in Laverna, only curiosity tempered by wariness. Together, they walked through Valdorne's upper district, their footsteps muffled by moss-lined stones. The Moonflower Chapel awaited them, nestled behind a curtain of ivy. Crystalline crescents glimmered along its stained windows, casting soft reflections of starlight on the path ahead.
Inside, the chapel pulsed with reverent calm. Its heart was a meditation pool, perfectly still and clear, ringed by six ivory pillars. Each pillar bore ancient moon-glyphs etched in languages older than the rebellion itself.
Laverna paused. "This place feels alive."
Tessara nodded. "It remembers."
Tessara guided Laverna to kneel at the pool's edge. The water shimmered like glass, reflecting both women and the moon above.
"Do not resist," Tessara murmured. "Let the memory come, and I will walk beside you."
Their crests glowed faintly—Laverna's on her lower abdomen, Tessara's below her shoulder. As their energy aligned, Tessara removed her blindfold, revealing silver-lit eyes clouded by mystic fog.
Laverna clutched her tiger-eye necklace tightly, its stone now humming in rhythm with her heartbeat.
"I trust you," she whispered.
Moonlight rippled across the water's surface. Tessara chanted in an ancient hymn, each syllable soft and melodic, as if coaxing open the gates of time. Their reflections dissolved like mist, pulling them into the dream-realm.
A pulse of magic surrounded them, and suddenly they were standing within the halls of the Lichtenstein Manor—only now it was distorted, submerged in crimson shadow and the flickering echoes of old pain.
Laverna stood still, her breath stolen by memory. She saw herself—small, trembling, shackled to a post in a stone chamber. Her arms bore fresh wounds, her face stained with soot and tears.
"Thomas... Magdalene..." she murmured.
"Ronald. Charles. Gavin," Tessara added quietly. "And Abigail."
Abigail's laughter—cold, brilliant, and laced with madness—echoed through the stone.
"Stop it!" Laverna cried out, but Tessara gently reached for her hand.
"You are no longer there. You are watching. Feel that. Breathe it. You're safe."
They walked through a parade of horrors—each scene more visceral than the last. Laverna saw herself locked in a cage beneath a staircase, treated as less than human. She saw a young boy forced to strike her with a whip. She saw the cruel scientific and medical tools in Abigail's workshop and felt again the searing pain of failed experiments meant to test her regenerative limits.
But Tessara never let go. The moonlight that guided them never faltered.
At the far edge of the memory, they saw the child version of Laverna curled on the ground, whispering prayers to her tiger-eye necklace.
"She wanted someone to answer," Tessara said. "Even if it was just herself."
Laverna knelt beside the memory and whispered with her younger self. Her words were different this time—gentler, stronger. "You're not weak. You're not broken. You are surviving, and one day you'll fight back."
The younger Laverna opened her tear-streaked eyes. For the first time, her expression showed something more than fear.
The scene shimmered and shifted. A new figure emerged—Shin. He stood tall, a silhouette of memory, his hand extended in that now-sacred moment of rescue. His warmth banished the cold.
Tessara's voice echoed like a guiding bell: "This is the moment you were freed. Let it define you, not what came before."
The memory shattered like glass struck by moonlight.
Back in the real world, the meditation pool glowed with renewed radiance. The tiger-eye necklace hummed in harmony, its soft gold light steady and warm.
Tessara exhaled slowly. "The necklace no longer holds pain. Only memory. And resolve."
Laverna opened her eyes. "I saw her—the girl I was. And for the first time... I didn't hate her. I didn't feel shame."
"You shouldn't," Tessara said, her voice tender. "That girl endured the unendurable. She held on when no one else would have. She carried you here."
The Moonflower Mask flickered on Tessara's brow, casting lunar sigils across the pool's surface.
"You are free to lead now," she continued, "not out of survival... but out of strength."
Tessara turned back to the pool. "Would you like to see what I saw?"
Laverna hesitated. "Can I?"
Tessara hummed a single crystalline note, and the waters stirred. Another vision unfolded.
They saw a battlefield blanketed in smoke and ash, but through the wreckage stood figures of light. Shin at the center, his arms not raised in dominance, but extended in peace. Around him stood his Servants, aged and radiant.
Laverna stood among them, her hair longer, her eyes calm. A scar graced her cheek, but she smiled genuinely. No pain. No fear. Just peace.
The image faded, but its warmth lingered.
"Not prophecy," Tessara said, her voice still soft. "But possibility. A future shaped not by fate, but by the will of the heart."
Laverna wiped her eyes, a tear tracing her freckled cheek. "Then I choose it. I want that future."
They sat together in the moonlit silence, shoulders touching, no longer Master and nun, assassin and seer—but sisters.
"Thank you," Laverna said, her voice raw but steady. "You've helped me see more than the moon."
Tessara tilted her head. "You've always had vision, Laverna. You just needed to forgive what it once saw."
Laverna leaned into her. "You're... strange," she said with a tired smile.
"I know," Tessara replied. "It's why I'm effective."
As the first streaks of dawn filtered into the temple's high windows, the meditation pool dimmed, the magic now resting.
Together, they rose and stepped into the coming day.
No longer haunted.
But whole.