You tell Mira everything.

The visions. The ceremony. The shadow figures. Seraphine’s warning and the quest for the relics. You hold nothing back, watching her face as the story unfolds.

When you finish, she’s silent for a long moment. The fire crackles between you.

“You’re either telling the truth,” she says finally, “or you’re the best liar I’ve ever met.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“I know.” She stands, pacing to the edge of the firelight. “I’ve been hunting things from the darkness for three years. Things that shouldn’t exist. Things that came from nowhere and started appearing after—” She stops herself.

“After what?”

“After the tremors started. In the gem. You probably didn’t notice them in Eldermoor, but out here…” She gestures at the wasteland around you. “The land remembers. Every time that crystal shudders, the earth shudders with it. And every time, something new crawls out of the shadows.”

She turns back to you. “I thought I was fighting symptoms. But you’re talking about the disease itself.”

“I’m talking about a cure.”

Mira studies you. “Seraphine’s Quill is in the Sunken Library. I’ve seen the entrance—a crack in the earth about two days east. Never went in. The things that guard it…” She shakes her head. “But if what you say is true, we don’t have a choice.”

She extends her hand. “I’ll take you there. Help you get through whatever’s waiting. In exchange, when this is over—if we survive—you help me hunt down whatever’s been spawning these creatures.”