Chapter 22: Baz

Morning settles over the Eclipse commons as Baz and Emory awaken after witnessing Lia Azula’s return and gruesome death. Haunted by Lia’s charred mouth and black spiral, they keep their discovery secret, drinking coffee in a tense quiet that threatens to break their tentative closeness. Seeking relief, Baz shows Emory the Obscura Hall illusion: fields and sea shaped by his memories of their shared youth with Romie.

The familiar landscape stirs memories of Threnody and the day the three of them ran the fields, underscoring what was lost and what might be regained. Baz pivots to the disturbing pattern: Travers the Healer returned as a husk; Lia the Wordsmith came back tongueless; both reappeared on nights matching their lunar houses, near Emory, whose presence and spiral seem to call them.

Pressed, Emory admits the spiral Mark appeared on her wrist the night of Dovermere and that she tried to reach Romie through it, but failed. Baz shares everything he has withheld: Romie’s obsession with Song of the Drowned Gods, the missing epilogue, doors to the Deep, and his research connecting the Tides, drowned gods, the star-song, and Emory’s spiral. He asks if she saw a door; she did not.

Together they map the parallels: four heroes in the tale, four vanished students—Healer, Wordsmith, Soultender, Dreamer—each tied to blood, bones, heart, and soul. The others who washed up with Emory likely drowned, while the four were admitted. Travers and Lia’s lethal returns suggest an incomplete method.

Baz argues the missing epilogue is the true key to traveling between worlds. Without it, the four crossed anyway and are now trapped “beneath stranger skies,” forced back piecemeal to die twisted by their own magics. The conclusion hardens their resolve: Romie and Jordyn are still alive somewhere, and Baz and Emory must find a way to reach them before the same fate strikes.