Morning settled over Avalon with a brightness that made the city look cleaner than it was. The white stone beyond Cardinal Aurevan's residence caught the sun in broad panels, and every chapel roof, arched window, and polished cross seemed designed to convince anyone looking from a distance that order and mercy had been carved into the streets themselves. Inside the private study, Noctis stood beside the table with the previous day's purchases arranged in controlled groups rather than piles, because even hidden work became easier when the physical order matched the plan in his mind. Common repair materials lay wrapped beneath legal shop seals, training tools sat in plain bundles, casing blanks and minor projectile stock were separated from field tablets and banner rods, while the Ordis-style calibration pin, scripture-thread bearing, cracked hymn-carved stabilizing crystal fragment, warped pressure-collar, and half-burned seal remained apart from everything else.
The seal drew his attention more than he wanted to admit. Its surviving edge still held the scorched imprint of the old workshop name, Ordis Rotational Works — Storage No. 3, and even incomplete, it changed the Fractured Halo Gear from an isolated relic problem into a trail through Avalon's creditor records, pawned estate lots, and forgotten workshop storage. It mattered, but that was exactly why he could not chase it too quickly. Saint Ash Pawn needed time to look through ledgers, and if Ren Arclight appeared the next morning demanding old Ordis files, every dealer between the lower bend and Solmire's upper repair stalls would know he wanted more than field hardware.
Noctis stored the seal again with the Halo Gear and let the crimson fold of Blood Storage Space close. The city still had other layers. Solmire Relic Row had shown him how Avalon sold its broken holy machinery; now he needed to see how Avalon handled broken people, especially the poor, the orphaned, the spiritually compatible children who might be trained, exploited, sponsored, or quietly buried beneath charitable language. The manuals from the auction had given him training doctrine, but doctrine did not grow from pages alone. It grew from institutions, from who received good tools, who ate first, who was tested, who was rejected, and who learned to obey before they learned why.
Aurevan came after a knock, dressed for another day of public business, with the controlled fatigue of a man whose household had become part of Noctis's infiltration and could not show even a wrinkle of it. He entered only after Noctis permitted him, glanced once at the nearly bare table, and understood without asking that the Solmire lead had not been abandoned. Noctis did not waste time making him guess. "Where do the lower charity wards begin?"
"Southwest of the chapel market," Aurevan said, keeping his voice low while a servant passed somewhere beyond the hallway. "The public kitchens, orphan houses, chapel schools, and minor sponsorship offices are clustered there."
"Can Ren Arclight walk through them without drawing the wrong attention?"
"Yes, but people will notice. High templars do not usually go there unless there is an inspection, escort duty, or trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
Aurevan's expression tightened, not dramatically, but with the discomfort of a man listing problems his own institution had learned to tolerate. "Missing children, forged sponsorship papers, fights over food distribution, recruiters taking more than they are allowed to take, and families arguing after a child is transferred without clear explanation."
"Recruiters for the Academy?"
"Sometimes. More often minor orders, chapel labor houses, provincial shrines, and families looking for bonded servants under lawful sponsorship." Aurevan looked toward the door as footsteps crossed the outer corridor, then continued when they faded. "The Holy Academy takes candidates from those wards, but most children never reach that level. They become scribes, choir aides, ward attendants, kitchen workers, minor clergy assistants, or labor bound to a sponsor."
"Who watches the process?"
"Officially, the Church." Aurevan exhaled softly through his nose, and for once the formal control around him did not hide the answer's ugliness. "Practically, whoever has enough patience to keep going back."
Noctis picked up his gloves from the table and slid them on. "I am going alone."
"That is safer for your cover today," Aurevan said. "Taking Brother Tovan again would make the market trip look like an ongoing procurement route. A high templar walking alone through lower charity streets can be read as inspection, discipline, or personal discomfort with paperwork."
"Good. If anyone asks why I am there?"
"You are observing field recruitment pathways and lower-order training supply conditions. That is dull enough to be believed."
Noctis almost smiled at the wording. "Dull things keep people alive."
"They also keep officials from asking interesting questions." Aurevan paused near the door, then added one more concern plainly. "The lower wards are not as clean as the central Church wants visitors to believe. Some workers will be afraid of you. Some will hope you are there to fix something. Most will try to decide which kind of official you are before speaking."
"I am not there to make promises."
"That may be wise." Aurevan opened the door, looked into the hall as if his next words belonged to ordinary household caution, and lowered his voice again. "There are people there who still mean well. Do not assume every broken part of the system is run by a villain."
Noctis looked at him for a moment. "I already know that."
Aurevan bowed and left him to dress fully as Ren Arclight. White-and-gold armor settled over Noctis with disciplined brightness, the hooded mantle cast its controlled shadow over his face, and the cross pendant rested at his chest with enough visibility to remind commoners and officials alike that he moved under Church authority. The false holy presence around him remained steady, not excessive, not theatrical, only strong enough to convince anyone short of divine inspection that a high templar had entered the street. Nocturne and Ruin stayed hidden in Blood Storage Space, and the coded lists rested inside his armor as dull procurement notes rather than dangerous plans.
Avalon's upper streets treated Ren Arclight the way polished institutions treated dangerous tools: with respect, space, and careful silence. Church guards glanced at him, recognized enough rank not to interfere, and returned to their posts. Priests crossed his path and lowered their heads without inviting conversation. Noble servants stepped aside before their masters noticed him, because servants understood danger faster than people protected from it. Noctis moved southwest through sunlit avenues, using Aurevan's blood memory for general direction while letting Sense Pulse check alleys, rooftops, and the movement of people who looked too still.
The city changed gradually. White stone did not vanish, but it became older, patched, and less carefully washed. Shrine suppliers replaced gold-trimmed devotional houses, and the stalls here sold secondhand prayer cords, chipped chalk tablets, repaired practice belts, cheap wax seals, old training slates, mended shoes, thin blankets, and bundles of plain paper tied with string. Laundry hung above narrow lanes where mothers watched children from doorways while pretending not to watch him. Men with old holy burns sat near chapel steps, some wearing former militia badges, others wrapped in cloaks that hid missing fingers, weakened legs, or the kind of spiritual scars that made their hands tremble even in sunlight.
This was still Avalon. That mattered. The lower wards were not a lawless slum outside holy order; they were a controlled extension of it, full of registries, chapel bells, charity seals, line markers, inspection posts, and notices telling people where to stand if they wanted food, medicine, instruction, sponsorship, or permission to exist in a cleaner district. The cruelty here was not wild. It was written down.
Noctis stopped first at a lower market lane that fed into the charity district. The stalls did not sell relic components like Solmire Relic Row. They sold the practical things poor trainees, chapel schools, minor orders, and sponsored children could afford: wooden banner rods with paint flaking at the edges, shield-line markers, weatherproof field tablets, low-grade tracking chalk, practice bolts with blunted heads, cheap scout mirrors, training weights made from cast stone, basic pain salves, and simple ward stakes bundled in groups of ten. Some goods were sturdy. Many were dressed to look sturdy by sellers who knew desperation would do the rest.
A man with a thick gray beard and a patched apron watched Noctis examine a row of training rods. "Are those for students, High Templar?"
"For field drills," Noctis said, turning one rod in his gloved hand.
"You want cheap or durable?"
"Durable."
"Then do not buy the painted rods." The merchant reached beneath the table and pulled out a bundle wrapped in rough cloth. "Those split after three weeks if students use them for impact drills. These are uglier, but the grain is better and the core is not hollow."
Noctis used Omni Eyes lightly, just enough to see the wood density, hidden cracks, and the practical truth beneath the merchant's claim. The painted rods were junk. The ugly rods were honest. He set the painted one down and pointed to the wrapped bundle. "Show me what training halls buy when they expect impact."
The merchant's eyebrows rose, and his posture eased because a buyer who cared about function wasted less time. "Then you want these rods, these markers, and the heavier ward stakes. The cheap stakes are for ceremonies and children too small to hit anything hard. The training halls buy the ones with ironwood cores."
"Pain salve?"
"For bruises or channel strain?"
"Bruises. Mild channel strain. Nothing that hides serious injury."
"That is the better answer." The merchant pulled two small jars from a covered shelf rather than the bright row displayed to the public. "The front jars smell better. These work better. If someone tells you a salve can fix a torn channel, he is selling you perfume with scripture on the lid."
Noctis bought the durable rods, shield-line markers, training stakes, basic scout mirrors, weatherproof field tablets, and two jars of practical salve. The purchase was small enough not to draw inspectors and ordinary enough for Ren's cover. Still, it taught him something useful. Even in cheap market goods, Avalon's inequality started early. Wealthier candidates could afford tools that survived impact. Poor trainees bought painted rods, brittle markers, and medicine that made pain smell holy without repairing anything.
He continued through the lower market without rushing, pausing at stalls only when the goods connected to the training plan. At one counter he bought tracking chalk that did not smear in damp stone passages. At another, he rejected practice bolts with uneven heads because students learning aim should not be blamed for crooked ammunition. Near a chapel-school supplier, he watched a woman haggle over two cracked writing tablets while her son stood beside her in a gray trainee tunic, face blank with the practiced shame of children who understood money too early. The seller eventually lowered the price by one coin, not out of generosity, but because Ren Arclight stood close enough for decency to become safer than greed.
Beyond the market, the smell of food replaced the smell of wood dust and cheap wax. A broad lane opened toward a charity kitchen attached to an old chapel school. Large soup kettles steamed beneath a covered yard, bread baskets moved from storeroom doors to distribution tables, and minor priests sat behind record boards where names were checked before bowls were handed out. Guards kept the lines from pressing too close. Older women in gray-and-white work veils moved faster than anyone else, correcting mistakes, calming children, scolding clerks, carrying cups of watered medicine, and catching trouble before it became loud enough for officials to notice.
Noctis stopped beneath a worn archway and watched. People were being fed. That was true. Children received bread, some old men received salve for burns, and a mother with two infants was moved ahead in line by a worker who pretended the record board had made the decision. There was real care here, the kind made of tired hands and repeated labor. There was also sorting, counting, eligibility marks, sponsorship stamps, and the quiet pressure of a system that turned hunger into paperwork before deciding how much mercy a person could receive.
The orphan line stood separately under a smaller awning. Children in plain gray-white uniforms waited with bowls in hand, some too thin, some too still, some whispering to one another while trying to look disciplined. A scribe checked names against a slate and marked symbols beside certain entries. Noctis recognized enough from Aurevan's blood memory to understand that the symbols mattered: basic chapel instruction, labor placement, holy compatibility screening, orphan house assignment, sponsorship review. One child looked at the marks as if they were weather. Another looked at them as if a small scratch of chalk could decide whether he slept somewhere safe.
An older woman noticed him watching. She had a narrow face, tired eyes, and sleeves rolled to her elbows, with flour on one wrist and a faded chapel seal pinned near her collar. She approached with a wariness that did not hide her protectiveness. "High Templar, are you here for inspection?"
"No."
Her gaze moved past him toward the children's line, then back to his face. "Then why are you watching the children's queue?"
"I am trying to understand how they are sorted."
The plainness of the answer seemed to surprise her. She looked him over again, deciding whether direct speech would punish her. When nothing in his posture demanded performance, she gave him the truth in the same practical tone she probably used when telling a child to hold still. "Some are tested for holy compatibility. Some go to chapel schools. Some are assigned to labor houses when there is no sponsor. Orphans wait longer because no parent is standing beside the clerk asking questions."
"Who decides?"
"Clerks decide first. Priests approve it. Families with money argue. Orphans usually cannot."
"What happens to the ones who fail testing?"
"If they are lucky, minor service." Her mouth tightened as a younger child in the line dropped his spoon and flinched before anyone scolded him. "If they are not, bonded labor under a sponsor who calls it mercy."
"You think the system is unfair."
"I think hungry children should not need a sponsor to be treated like people." She met his eyes for one second longer than caution advised, then looked away toward the bread table. "My name is Sister Maline. If you are not here for inspection, do not stand where the little ones think you are deciding their placements. They have enough fear today."
Noctis shifted away from the line, placing himself beside the archway instead of directly before the children. "Better?"
"Yes." Maline sounded almost surprised that he had moved. "Thank you."
He studied the queue from the new angle. "Are children moved without clear records often?"
Sister Maline did not answer immediately because a worker called her name from the bread table. She signaled with two fingers, waited until the worker understood to keep distributing, then stepped closer to Noctis without making the conversation look secret. "Often enough that I keep my own copies when I can. Not every missing record means a child was taken. Sometimes clerks are careless. Sometimes offices do not send papers on time. Sometimes a sponsor changes the destination after approval."
"And when it is not careless?"
"Then we ask questions until someone tells us to stop asking."
A woman's voice rose near the record board before Noctis could ask more. "My sister's boy was on this list yesterday. Where is he?" The speaker was young, probably not the child's mother, with a threadbare shawl pulled tight around her shoulders and a folded paper clutched in one hand. She stood before a seated clerk whose neat robe and dry expression made him look less cruel than inconvenient, which was sometimes worse.
"If he was transferred, the receiving house will have the paper," the clerk said without looking at her directly.
"Which house?"
"I do not have that record here."
"Then who does?"
"The sponsorship office."
"They sent me here."
The clerk finally looked up, annoyed now that the problem had returned with a face. "Then you need to request a secondary copy from the sponsorship office."
"I did. They said lower intake holds the morning movement sheet."
"This desk does not have it."
The woman gripped the paper harder. "He is nine. He does not know the city. He was told he was going to be tested for chapel school, not moved somewhere without family."
A guard took one step closer, not threatening her outright, but present enough to remind everyone how arguments ended when hungry people raised their voices. Sister Maline's jaw tightened, and Noctis saw the calculation in her eyes. If she intervened too hard, she could lose access. If she did not intervene, the woman would be pushed into another office with no answer. The system did not need to be openly vicious when it could exhaust people until they stopped.
Noctis walked toward the desk. The crowd shifted out of his path, not from drama, but because armor and authority moved differently from hunger. The clerk saw him approach and straightened so quickly his stylus scraped the slate. The guard stopped moving toward the woman and turned his attention to Ren Arclight instead.
"What is the child's name?" Noctis asked.
The woman looked startled, then suspicious, then desperate enough to answer. "Jorin Pell. His mother is dead. I am his aunt."
Noctis looked at the clerk. "Find the morning movement sheet."
The clerk swallowed. "High Templar, if it is not at this desk—"
"Check before you explain why you cannot."
The clerk reached for the side box with stiff fingers and began sorting through folded sheets. Noctis did not raise his voice, and he did not threaten him. He simply stood there while the man performed the task he should have performed before. After several papers shifted, the clerk found a narrow transfer copy stuck beneath an intake tally and went pale in the small, ordinary way of people caught by incompetence rather than crime.
"Jorin Pell was moved to West Chapel Holding," the clerk said.
The aunt's voice shook. "Why?"
The clerk scanned the line. "Preliminary compatibility mark. Sponsorship review pending."
"Who signed it?"
The question came from Noctis, not the aunt. The clerk looked down again. "Assistant Registrar Halven."
Sister Maline had come closer by then, and she reached for the transfer copy before the clerk could bury it again. "I will take her to West Chapel Holding."
The clerk opened his mouth. Noctis looked at him. The clerk closed it.
The aunt pressed the folded paper to her chest, and her relief did not look like joy because the child was still not with her. "Thank you," she whispered, though she seemed unsure whether she was thanking Sister Maline, Noctis, or the fact that someone had finally made the clerk search the box.
Noctis stepped back from the desk. This was not the missing-child problem solved. This was one name found because a high templar had stood close enough to make negligence uncomfortable. That mattered, but it also made the pattern uglier. If one misfiled transfer could hide a nine-year-old from his only relative for a day, then forged papers, predatory sponsors, and deliberate reroutes had room to breathe.
Sister Maline passed the transfer copy to another worker, gave instructions for the aunt to receive bread before leaving, and returned to Noctis with a look that carried caution, gratitude, and renewed suspicion all at once. "You helped."
"I asked for a paper."
"Here, that counts as help more often than it should." She glanced toward the orphan line, where several children were now staring at Noctis with less fear and more uncertainty. "You said you were trying to understand how they are sorted. Now you have seen part of it."
"I have seen a clerk misplace a child."
"You saw the gentle version."
Before Noctis could answer, the courtyard changed.
It was not a holy surge, not a dramatic arrival, not anything the wards announced. The children noticed first. Heads turned toward the side gate leading from a narrower lane into the charity yard, and the tension in several small bodies loosened at once. A girl near the bread table lifted onto her toes. A boy who had been guarding his bowl with both hands leaned forward as if he had heard a familiar song beneath the market noise. Even some adults looked up, and their faces softened with a warmth that did not resemble fear of rank.
A young woman entered through the side gate carrying a covered basket in one hand and a bundle of folded cloth in the other. She wore plain white with a gray shawl over her shoulders, simple enough that a stranger could mistake her for a charity worker, and her dark hair was tied back without jewels, ribbons, or ceremonial pins. Two escort guards came with her, one just behind and one to the gate side, both alert in a way that belonged to trained protection rather than casual accompaniment. They watched rooftops, doorways, the queue, and every adult who moved too quickly, but they did not interfere when the children surged toward her.
Noctis stopped before his body gave the reaction away.
For half a breath, Avalon disappeared behind a face from another life.
She was not wrapped in frostfire radiance. She did not wear the robes, ornaments, or presence of the woman Haotian had loved across a world that no longer belonged to this one. She was human, plain-clothed, carrying food and cloth into a lower charity courtyard while a guard checked the alley behind her. Reason moved quickly enough to warn him that this was Avalon, that this world had no reason to place Yanfei here, that resemblance was not identity. Memory moved faster.
The line of her eyes, the shape of her mouth, the calm concentration in her face as she searched the children before answering anyone else, all of it struck something buried beneath Noctis's own life. Alter's merged soul carried Haotian's love, grief, warmth, and old domestic memories so deeply that they did not arrive as information. They arrived as recognition without proof. For one dangerous moment, Yanfei's face overlaid the young woman's, and the orphan courtyard filled with echoes of family halls, frostfire light, shared meals, and a wife's voice from a life Noctis had inherited through fusion rather than birth.
He controlled his body. Ren Arclight did not flinch, did not step forward, did not stare like a man struck through the heart by memory. His gaze shifted as if he were only assessing a new arrival in a public courtyard, and his posture remained calm beneath white-and-gold armor. But inwardly, the thread tightened so sharply that the Ordis seal, the missing children, and the market lists all seemed to move aside for the face of a woman who should not be here.
"Miss Elian!" a child called.
The young woman turned immediately, and the practical warmth of the movement hit Noctis harder than the face. A small boy ran toward her too fast, nearly tripped on the edge of the stone channel, and she shifted the basket to one arm so she could catch him by the shoulder before he fell. "Are you hurt?" she asked, not scolding, not fussing, just asking what mattered.
"No," the boy said, already clutching her sleeve.
"Then breathe. You almost lost the soup before you even got it." Her voice was gentle, but clear enough that the boy obeyed, drawing in a shaky breath while she steadied him. "Did you eat this morning?"
He looked down.
"That means no." She turned toward one of the older caretakers, who was smiling at her like a niece who had come home late and brought trouble with her. "Mara saved him bread?"
"She tried," the caretaker said. "He said he was waiting for you."
The young woman sighed, but there was no irritation in it. "Waiting does not fill your stomach, Telli. Come on. We fix that first, then you can tell me why you thought skipping breakfast was clever."
"I did not think it was clever," the boy muttered.
"Good. That saves us time."
The adults laughed softly, not because she had performed for them, but because they knew her and were relieved to see the child respond. One of the kitchen women took the covered basket from her without ceremony and said, "You came early again. You said you were going to rest today."
"I rested enough," Miss Elian said, already scanning the children's faces. "Did Mara eat?"
"Half a bowl. She said she was waiting for you too."
"Of course she did." Miss Elian gave the folded cloth bundle to another worker and lowered her voice as a thin girl half-hidden behind the bread table watched her with guarded eyes. "Where is she?"
"Back room. She cried after the sponsorship clerk left."
"I will check on her after Telli eats." Miss Elian looked toward the two guards, who had remained near the courtyard edge with hands close to their weapons and attention on the surroundings rather than the conversation. "I am staying inside the yard for now."
One guard nodded, but his concern did not ease. He was not relaxed around the orphanage because he mistrusted the children. He was alert because he believed danger could reach her even here. Noctis noticed that, but it did not tell him who she was. Important people had guards. Kind people with enemies had guards. Church workers who angered the wrong sponsors might have guards if someone powerful cared enough. None of that made her a saint in his eyes.
What mattered more was how everyone else behaved around her. The children approached without fear. The adults spoke to her warmly, handed her tasks naturally, and scolded her lightly for doing too much instead of bowing or freezing around rank. Sister Maline, who had challenged Noctis with tired courage minutes earlier, looked at Miss Elian with open affection and visible relief. This was not the respect Avalon gave authority. This was trust earned in repeated visits, in remembered names, in food carried by hand, in a child eating because she was there to watch him do it.
Noctis remained near the archway and let the scene unfold. Miss Elian knelt beside a little girl who had hidden one hand in her sleeve, asked, "Why are you hiding your hand?" and waited without touching her until the girl answered. The child whispered something too soft for most people to hear, but Noctis caught it clearly. "If they know I burned it, I lose my place."
"You will lose more if that burn closes wrong," Miss Elian said. "Show me."
The girl shook her head.
Miss Elian did not reach for her by force. She set a clean cloth on her own knee, then held out her empty hands. "Are you afraid I will send you away?"
The girl nodded once.
"I will not." Miss Elian's voice stayed steady, and the courtyard around her seemed to give the child room to believe it. "But I need to see how bad it is."
Slowly, the girl pulled her hand from the sleeve. The burn was not large, but it crossed the palm in a line that would stiffen badly if ignored. Miss Elian looked toward Sister Maline. "Cool water first. Then salve. Not the cheap jar. The one in the blue tin."
Sister Maline was already moving. "I have it."
"Good." Miss Elian looked back at the girl. "You are not losing your place because you got hurt. If anyone says otherwise, send them to me."
The girl's mouth trembled. "You promise?"
"I promise."
Noctis watched the exchange with a stillness that belonged to restraint more than calm. Yanfei would have asked about the hand before the rule. Yanfei would have cared less about the official line than whether the child was hiding pain. Yanfei would have spoken plainly enough for a frightened person to understand, then made the institution deal with the truth afterward. The resemblance was not only the face, and that made it more dangerous.
He did not trust coincidence. He also did not trust longing, memory, or inherited love to identify reality correctly. This woman was not Yanfei just because his soul reacted to her. She might be a human girl with an impossible face, a reincarnation, a trap, a divine joke, or a coincidence so cruelly precise that the universe deserved to be insulted for it. Noctis did not have enough information. Acting without information would be the mistake of a man who had forgotten where he stood.
So Ren Arclight remained silent.
Miss Elian stayed for nearly an hour. She helped children eat, checked two minor injuries, argued quietly with a clerk over a placement note, and sat on the courtyard step with a small group who needed to recite letters before receiving their afternoon instruction. The guards shifted positions as the sun moved, never far from her, never interrupting unless someone at the gate lingered too long. Adults came and went around her easily. One caretaker pressed a cup into her hand and told her to drink before she fainted from helping everyone else. Miss Elian accepted the cup with a sheepish expression that made several children giggle.
Noctis learned more by watching that than he would have learned from any official report. She had standing, but she did not use it like rank. She had protection, but the guards did not define her relationship with the orphanage. The adults did not flatter her. They worried about her. The children did not worship her. They trusted her enough to complain, cling, hide, confess, and demand attention. Whoever she was in Avalon's hierarchy, the orphanage knew her first as someone who came back.
Eventually she left through the same side gate, the guards tightening around her as the lane beyond the courtyard grew busier. Children followed until Sister Maline shooed them back toward the food line, and Miss Elian promised three of them she would return before night if her schedule allowed. That promise mattered in the courtyard. Noctis felt the mood change after she passed out of sight. The children did not become hopeless, but the warmth lowered, as if a lamp had been carried into another room.
Noctis waited until the line moved again before approaching Sister Maline. She had just finished correcting a tally and was wiping her hands on a cloth when she noticed him looking toward the side gate. Her eyes narrowed slightly, though the earlier fear had faded into something more measured. "Are you looking for someone, High Templar?"
"The young woman in white," Noctis said. "The children know her."
Sister Maline's expression softened at once, not because she understood why he asked, but because the subject itself disarmed some part of her. "Miss Elian. She comes often. More than she should, if you ask the guards."
"Why does she come back so often?"
Maline looked toward the orphan house, where Telli was finally eating under the supervision of an older girl who kept pushing the bowl closer every time he slowed. "Because some of them will not eat unless she is here."
Noctis kept his face still. "She returns today?"
"After evening bell," Sister Maline said. "The little ones settle better when she comes before night. Some wake afraid. Some hide food. Some think if they sleep too deeply, they will be moved before morning. She talks them down when we cannot."
"She works here?"
"Not officially." Maline gave a small, tired smile. "Officially, half of what keeps this place alive does not exist."
That answer told him enough for now. Noctis did not press for a title, sponsor, family, or rank. Asking too much would make his interest visible, and his interest was already sharper than he wanted. He thanked Maline with a short nod, not as a benefactor, not as a savior, only as a man acknowledging information given plainly. Then he left the charity yard before the children could decide Ren Arclight was part of their day.
The walk back through the lower wards felt different because the city now had another layer over it. The secondhand prayer cords, cheap training rods, chapel queues, misfiled transfers, and old men with holy burns still mattered, but they no longer stood alone. Somewhere inside that system, a woman with Yanfei's face moved through kitchens, orphan rooms, paperwork disputes, frightened children, and alert guards while the people around her treated her not as an ornament of holiness but as someone they needed. Noctis had come to understand Avalon's machinery of charity, labor, testing, and control. He had found all of that, and then he had found a human thread running through it with a face from another life.
He did not return directly to Aurevan with questions. Not yet. Aurevan might know who she was, and that knowledge would come soon enough, but Noctis wanted to see her once more before another man's title, explanation, or Church category shaped the image. Infiltration required information, but this was not only infiltration anymore. He disliked admitting that, even privately. The problem was not that Avalon guarded her. The problem was that his own memories did.
By the time he reached the cleaner streets near the Church residence, the afternoon light had begun to thin. Noctis carried his lower-market purchases in legal wrappings, his mind carried names and patterns, and Blood Storage Space held the older mechanical lead waiting with the Halo Gear. The Ordis seal had given him a trail through dead workshops and creditor records. The lower wards had given him something less clean, less mechanical, and far harder to file away.
A woman called Miss Elian would return after evening bell because some children would not eat unless she was there.
Noctis entered Aurevan's residence as Ren Arclight, calm beneath white-and-gold armor, while the city behind him continued ringing its holy bells over hunger, records, charity, and fear. He had three threads now: Ordis Storage No. 3, the lower ward's child-sorting problem, and the young woman who wore Yanfei's face without knowing what that meant to the man who had seen her.
The second thread was dangerous because children were being moved through a system that hid cruelty behind process.
The third was more dangerous.
Not because Avalon guarded it.
Because it would return after evening bell.