An attack. Of course, that was the immediate assumption Burn jumped to regarding Morgan’s state. He hadn’t yet learned Vision, so he was left fumbling in the dark, utterly unable to read her mind or determine if her soul still existed.

"Get out," he commanded the young man—there wasn’t much the lad could do about anything unfolding here anyway. The boy flinched and bowed, nearly tripping over himself to escape, as if the floor had suddenly turned to lava.

Burn laid Morgan’s body gently on the floor and inspected the treasury. The key-bearer had been right; the former king’s regalia had an unexpected new beauty—it was dull and fragile, like week-old bread left out in the open.

His gaze fell onto Morgan’s catalyst, his eyes narrowing at this potential clue.

"Nemo," he called, remembering how Morgan and Isaiah addressed it. Or her. "There must be a reason why they called you by a name and a pronoun."

Suddenly, the catalyst trembled, a single heartbeat of motion that felt ridiculous in the situation.

"Nemo," he called again, feeling like he was addressing an eccentric pet rather than an object of power.

CLATTER-CLATTER!

The catalyst shook more fervently.

"What happened to Morgan?" Burn asked patiently. "Can you show me? Or are we just going to rattle like an old man’s bones?"

“…apa!”

Silence.

Silence…

"What?" Burn narrowed his eyes, suspicion brewing.

"Papa!" the catalyst chirped, its voice curiously reminiscent of Morgan’s—only it possessed an innocent, almost too-cute young charm.

Burn raised his hand, a storm of fury gathering above his palm, a miniature sun dying in real time, bending light around it like a well-honed illusion. "Let’s drop the games, shall we? What on earth happened to my wife?"

It was hard to explain, but the hourglass appeared as though it might spontaneously implode from dread, tiny beads of anxious sweat trickling down its surface.

"M-m-m-mama…"

Burn’s glare intensified.

"Mind! Prison! Curse!" the hourglass blurted, spitting out words like a jumbled mess in a word salad contest.

Ah, splendid, Burn thought. A cryptic hourglass. Just what he needed for his day of joy and sunshine. His rage simmered beneath the surface, like magma waiting for a vent.

Here he was, contemplating the fate of Morgan, and instead, he had acquired a panic-stricken hourglass babbling nonsense.

"Mama! Mind prison, curse! Trap! Mama! Saint! Abyss—"

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The hourglass seemed to hesitate, as if floundering in the depths of its own limited vocabulary, but it soldiered on, desperate for clarity. "Papa kill… Mama kill…?"

Burn frowned, his mind a tangled mess of confusion. "What do you mean?" he implored, trying to unravel the cryptic threads woven by the hourglass. "What do you mean ‘kill’? Is she dead? Why haven’t I returned to the past, then?"

"Mama prison, curse… Papa kill… Mama return! Mama mind, prison! Papa kill! Mama say! Mama ask!"

Burn directed his gaze back to Morgan, eyebrows arched in skeptical wonder. Mind prison?

So, not only was her imminent death today or tomorrow not because of Mahkato waltzing onto the scene with the intention to kill him—no, it turned out the real villain was someone a tad closer to home.

"She’s trapped, and she wants me to kill her?"

He slowly sat beside her, gathering her back into his lap. Her eyes, wide open yet devoid of meaning, stared into the void as he wondered if she could even see or hear him. Probably not.

Her beauty remained utterly unchanged, as striking as a masterpiece trapped inside an enchanting glass doll. Her golden hair spilled over his legs like soft silk, and her blue eyes—the bluest of blue—felt like a cruel blade twisting in his chest.

The thought of her mind sealed away in some abyss gnawed at him.

"What actually happened to you?" he mused aloud. Wouldn’t it be a waste if he didn’t know her memory before he killed her? And here he was, contemplating murder. Yes, Burn had killed her before in previous loops, but this time? It was different.

"Memory! Nemo!" Mnemosyne’s Aeons suddenly chimed in. "Papa! Transfer—memory! Kill! Return!"

Ah, the charming chime of a pint-sized oracle with the depth of a puddle.

Burn turned to the rickety hourglass perched on the floor, shaking with the sort of eager urgency one could only expect from a disturbed clock.

"Did you actually record her memory? But how are we supposed to bring it back to the past?" he quizzed, irritation creeping into his voice.

"Contract! Papa contract!" she insisted, her cute voice like a toddler trying to explain quantum physics.

Burn narrowed his eyes as if sheer scrutiny could make sense of her babbling. "A contract with you?"

"Papa! Nemo eat! Memory eat!" she rambled again from the floor, a bundle of chaotic energy. "Papa Mana, Papa memory contract!"

It was as if she were trying to draft a legal document while playing hopscotch. But perhaps, just perhaps, now that he’d grown accustomed to her adorably cryptic chatter, he could piece together the essence of her words.

"How do I make a contract with you?" he asked.

The rattling hourglass shook yet again. "Blood! Nemo!" Suddenly, the ouroboros, that charmingly morbid snake eating its own tail, slithered to life, inching up to him while still tethered to the hourglass. Looking up with a serpent’s elegance, it hissed, "Ssssshhh—"

"I just have to give you my blood, huh?" Burn reiterated, raising an eyebrow.

The snake lunged at his arm, biting him fiercely, only to recoil at the realization that its fangs couldn’t even pierce his skin.

"Ow…" the hourglass grimaced, somehow.

Burn sighed. With a finger shimmering with his Force, he made a deliberate slice on his arm, feeding a drop to the serpentine creature. It pulled away and resumed its pastime of devouring its own tail, now almost comically cartoonish—a cute little snake blissfully munching away its own tail.

"Contract! Memory! Mama plan! Nemo help? Nemo good?" it chirped, its tone oddly adorable amidst the gravity of the situation.

Burn’s gaze wandered to Morgan on his lap. She had planned to solve the memory problem, searching for a solution while Mnemosyne’s Aeons tried to help by her own will. How had she figured all this out?

"Praise! Papa praise!" she suddenly demanded, her voice a melodic echo in the silence.

A chuckle escaped him, more genuine than he intended. In that moment, her voice bore a striking resemblance to Morgan’s, but with a childlike glee that tugged at his heartstrings—an expression of innocence wrapped in sheer charm.

"Good girl."

"Praise! Good!"

Could it be any more ridiculous? A cute concoction of vibrancy amidst this contract of blood and death. The juxtaposition between the ominous and the innocent made his heart ache with a fondness he couldn’t yet admit, even to himself. Not to mention, this object didn’t look remotely like a child.

"Papa kill Mama?" it suddenly asked timidly.

Burn’s gaze deepened. With his fingers, he gently closed Morgan’s eyes. Suddenly, she looked peaceful, as if she were merely sleeping—not trapped in a bottomless abyss of a mind prison or whatever it was.

He brushed her soft, velvety cheek and said, "Nemo, look away."