V. Rationalism — Parisa

In a Paris flat, Dalton confronts Parisa about her absence. She explains she “dealt with Nothazai,” effectively taking the Forum off the board, and admits Reina and Callum were no help. Dalton insists the ritual doesn’t require allies and that Parisa must choose someone to kill, pressing the inevitability of violence.

Parisa weighs targets and her exhaustion with perpetual danger. Dalton pivots: the experiment is his “birthright,” not a choice. He demonstrates by sculpting light and darkness into a life-sized, living replica of Parisa. The animation displays awareness without a mind, terrifying Parisa and confirming Dalton’s unique ability to draw “life” from some unknown source.

Dalton argues the experiment must include both physicists, the naturalist, the seer, and himself, accepting that creation may destroy something elsewhere. He claims he deserves answers after years of confinement. When Parisa hesitates, Dalton abruptly pierces the animated Parisa with a corkscrew, letting it crumple and bleed out, asserting it “isn’t real.”

Watching her double die, Parisa realizes Atlas needed her precisely because he knew his own weakness—he counted on her to stop an experiment that is ethically catastrophic. She also reframes Libby’s inner light as certainty, not guilt, a zeal that makes Libby dangerously unstoppable. Feeling Dalton’s volatility, Parisa chooses flight over confrontation.

Parisa bolts through the window, uses limited physical magic to land safely, and runs barefoot into the Paris night. An unknown medeian assassin briefly tails her with a strange weapon marked by a W-like logo; she psychically diverts him. Reeling, Parisa rejects grand purposes and decides survival is enough—for now. Remembering a clue in Libby’s thoughts about Atlas’s past, she fixes on pursuing Atlas’s origins as her next step and disappears into the night.