The room felt smaller with everyone in it.
Dawn noticed it as soon as Lizzy followed him through the door. Elara was awake now, sitting up in her chair with a crick in her neck she was pretending she didn't have. The girl was still on the cot, but her eyes were open, watching the door. The golden-haired man stood at the back by the window, same spot, same arms crossed. Noir and Rias were where they always were, wrapped in that faint flicker, not caring what anyone was doing.
Lizzy stopped just inside the door and looked at all of it.
"Okay," she said. "That's a lot of people."
"You get used to it," Dawn said.
"Do you?"
"No."
Elara looked at Lizzy, then at Dawn, then back at Lizzy. "You're the one who's been standing outside since yesterday."
Lizzy didn't even blink. "Since the plaza. Hi."
"Hi," Elara said slowly. "I'm Elara."
"Lizzy." She grinned and pointed at Dawn with her thumb. "I'm his best friend. Don't let him tell you otherwise."
"He's never mentioned you."
"Rude," Lizzy said, looking at Dawn. "Really rude."
"I've been busy."
"Four days of busy."
"Elara, this is the one with all the questions you wanted answered," Dawn said, because it was the fastest way to change the subject. "Ask her."
Elara raised an eyebrow at him. But she turned to Lizzy, and the smile on Lizzy's face got a little smaller. She'd clocked what kind of questions they'd be. She just hadn't been asked yet.
"Dawn said you were in Rinzard when it happened," Elara said. "Whatever it was. I wasn't there when he told you."
"Right." Lizzy pushed her glasses up. She took a second before she started, and Dawn noticed it. Lizzy didn't take seconds. "I was at the palace. Qualifiers for the tournament. Everyone was packed in, loud, you know how it gets. Then everything just went quiet."
"Quiet how?"
"Like someone turned the sound off. And then a beam came down. Right over the palace, huge, I couldn't see where it started. No noise, nothing shook. It was just there." She made a shape with her hands, then dropped them. "Then it was gone, and there was a piece of the palace missing. Clean edges. No rubble, no dust. Like it had always been shaped that way."
Elara said nothing.
"It happened again. Somewhere else in the city. Then again. It kept taking pieces. And people ran, obviously, I ran too, and that's when it got weird." Her voice stayed light. Her hand didn't. It had found the hilt of her blade without her noticing. "The beam started splitting. Little balls of light, fast. Faster than anything I've seen. They weren't going for buildings. They went for people. And when they caught someone they just, took them. Teleported, I guess. That's what I figure."
"And you," Elara said.
"One got me. I tried to fight it." Lizzy let out a short breath. "My sequence wouldn't come. I could feel my stars, they were right there, but it was like something was sitting on them. Never had that before." She looked at the floor for a moment, then looked up again and laughed. Just once, quiet and a little off. "Honestly? Felt like the world was ending."
Nobody laughed with her.
Dawn kept his eyes on the window. He'd heard it all downstairs already. It didn't land any softer the second time.
"How much of it is left?" Elara asked.
"I don't know. I didn't see the end. It wasn't stopping when I went."
The silence after that was thick enough to cut. Elara looked at Dawn.
"So the plan is still the portal."
"Yeah."
"To Rinzard."
"Yeah."
"Which just got eaten."
"Parts of it," Dawn said. "Maybe."
"Dawn." She said it carefully, not angry. "Whatever did that is still out there. We don't know what it wanted or if it's finished. And we're about to walk through a door that lands us in the middle of it."
He'd already thought about that. He'd thought about it all night and most of the morning, and he still didn't have an answer he liked.
"I know," he said.
"And?"
"And it's home." He shrugged. It came out smaller than he meant it to. "If something's wrong there, I'd rather see it than sit here guessing."
"That isn't a plan, that's a feeling."
"Two weeks is a long time to turn a feeling into a plan."
Elara looked at him for a moment longer. Then she sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Fine."
"We could ask him," Lizzy said, nodding toward the back of the room. She was grinning again, but it was thinner now. "Tall, blond, intense. Does he talk, or—"
She stopped.
Dawn watched it happen. Her mouth was open on the next word, and then it just wasn't there. Her eyes went a little unfocused, like she'd lost track of what she'd been about to say, and she blinked twice.
"...Never mind," she said. "What was I saying?"
Elara's eyes narrowed and went straight to the golden-haired man. He looked back at her. Calm. Not a single thing on his face.
Dawn rubbed the back of his neck. *Not this again.*
"He'll talk when he wants to," he said. "Don't take it personally."
"Okay," Lizzy said, in the voice of someone who absolutely was going to take it personally later. She shook it off and crossed the room, and Dawn realized where she was headed a second too late.
She crouched in front of the cot, a few feet back. Not too close. She'd done that on purpose.
"Hey," she said. "I'm Lizzy. I saw you yesterday, from up on a roof. Hope that's not weird."
The girl looked at her. Looked at the blade at her hip, the cat ears, the glasses. Then at the collar on her own neck, like Lizzy might be looking at it too.
She was.
Dawn watched Lizzy's smile stay exactly where it was. It took effort. He knew her well enough to see that.
"You don't have to say anything," Lizzy said. "It's just my name. That's all."
For a while nothing happened. Elara had gone quiet. The golden-haired man hadn't moved. Outside, the ring of light was sliding toward its afternoon gold, and the crystal in the walls pulsed along with it.
Then the girl turned her head toward the window.
"The light didn't hurt them."
It was barely a voice. She wasn't talking to Lizzy, or to anyone.
"It only took them somewhere it thought was better."
Nobody moved.
Lizzy was very still. Dawn hadn't seen her that still since the day her sequence first woke up and scared her half to death.
"What did you say?" she asked softly.
But the girl just looked out the window, face blank, like she hadn't said anything at all. Like someone else had borrowed her mouth for a second and handed it back.
Dawn looked at her for a long moment.
*Great,* he thought. *Another one.*
He didn't ask. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.
Lizzy stood up slowly and went back to the middle of the room. She didn't say a word. She only looked at Dawn, and the look said *later*. He nodded once. They'd always been good at that.
Conversation started up again after that, slow at first. Elara asked about the tournament. Lizzy started telling a story about her last qualifier match that was obviously half exaggeration, and Dawn let it wash over him. He mentioned the Guild, and Dagger, and the administrator who looked asleep and wasn't. Lizzy listened with her head tilted, interrupting twice with questions that went right to the part he was trying to skip.
The girl stayed on the cot, watching them.
At the back of the room, the golden-haired man looked at her.
He'd noticed the mark the day Dawn brought her in. A thin pale line across her forearm. Old, the kind that came from a belt or a cane, not a fall. It had been sharp then.
It wasn't now.
The edges had gone soft. The line was shorter than it had been that morning, and fainter, as if something under her skin was quietly undoing it, without hurry, without her knowing. She had pulled her sleeve up to scratch her wrist and hadn't looked down once.
The golden-haired man watched it for a while longer.
Then he turned back to the wall.
He said nothing.