Caterina left the shop while Artemisia washed her trembling hands in the back. She had to find the passage before her own mind turned foreign too. But the streets stretched in every direction, and each one looked the same. She had no idea where the passage had opened. She only knew it was still open, somewhere, waiting. Every hour she wandered, the change dug deeper. She caught herself reading a shop sign without effort, though the words were not English. She stopped walking. She had understood them like a native. A voice cut across the lane. "You came out." A woman stood at a black iron gate, brambly rose bushes crowding the porch behind her. She wore full mourning black, and her eyes were sharp with suspicion. "I watch that shop. I keep a record. Dates. Smells. My husband smelled it before he died. Something is wrong in there." This was Lucia, Artemisia's neighbor, the one Artemisia refused to let inside. "You are one of her projects. I can see it. Your hair changed since yesterday." Caterina touched the bun she had pinned without thinking. "She's changing me," she said. "With a mint. It's making me forget who I am. I need to find the passage I came through. It's still open. If I don't find it soon, there won't be enough of me left to leave." Lucia opened the gate. "Then we do not trust her. We trust the record." She led Caterina up the porch and inside, past drawn curtains, to a desk stacked with papers. "I mark strange things. Not just her shop." She pulled one page free. "Three nights past. A moth. Black wings, big as two hands. It circled the old well behind the chandler's row. Moths like that gather where time tears. My husband said so. He was right about the smell. He was right about the moth." Caterina's chest tightened. "You've seen where it torn." "I have seen where the moth goes." Lucia tapped the page. "Follow the moth. It knows the wound." They went out together at dusk. The chandler's row was quiet. Behind it stood a low stone well, half-choked with weeds. And there, above the black water, the giant moth hung in the air. Its velvet wings shimmered green and purple. It turned slow circles over one spot, as if held there. Beneath it, the air rippled like heat over a road. Caterina felt a pull in her teeth, in her bones. The passage. It was here. "That is it," she breathed. Then a thought rose, unbidden and calm: *This well is older than the chandler's guild. My grandmother drew water here.* She had no grandmother in Valserra. The false memory felt true. She gripped Lucia's arm. "I found it. But I'm running out of time. My own thoughts are turning into hers. We have to go through before I forget why I want to."

The moth still turned its slow circles over the well when Caterina pulled Lucia back. "I can't go through yet," she said. "Not like this. The mint is still working in me. If I cross while I'm half hers, I might arrive as no one." She needed to undo the change first. That meant Artemisia's shop. That meant the tools that made her. Lucia understood at once. She had watched that shop for years. "She sleeps after dark," Lucia said. "The smell fades. That is when the lights go out." They walked back through the quiet lanes to Lucia's house, the dark turret rising above the brambly roses. Inside, past the drawn curtains, Lucia laid a plan flat on the desk like one of her records. "Her back door sticks. I have heard it. We go in, we find what unmakes you, we leave." Caterina hesitated. Artemisia had burned her clothes, yes. But Artemisia had also fed her, named her, kept her hidden. "She helped me," Caterina said. Lucia did not raise her voice. "She is remaking you. That is not help." Caterina looked at her own hands, at the hair she had pinned without thinking. She nodded. They waited until the shop went dark. The back door gave with a low scrape. Inside, the heavy velvet drapes sealed the room in black. Caterina lit a stub of candle. Everything looked strange to her changed eyes, but she knew what she wanted. On the worktable sat the seam kit, its scissors and thimble laid out like surgeon's tools. Beside it, the tin of mints. Caterina reached for the kit. "This is how she stitches people. There has to be a way back in here." Lucia moved to the shelves, lifting bolts of cloth, searching. Caterina opened the kit. The thimble was warm. She did not know why. Her fingers found a slim silver hook, and a memory that was not hers whispered its name. She flinched. A lamp flared in the doorway. Artemisia stood there in her nightdress, blue eyes wide, then cold. She looked at the open kit in Caterina's hands. She looked at Lucia among the cloth. Her gaze came back to Caterina and stayed. "You," Artemisia said softly. "I gave you shelter. I let you keep your shoes." Her voice did not rise. It sank. "And you open my door for her." She did not look at Lucia again. Only at Caterina. That was worse. "I need to be myself when I go home," Caterina said. "Undo it. Please." Artemisia's hand tightened on the lamp. "It cannot be undone. You know that now. You came to steal it anyway." She stepped inside and shut the door behind her. "Put down my scissors, Caterina." Caterina did not put them down. She held the kit against her chest. The trust between them was gone, and both of them knew it. Whatever came next, she could not walk back into this shop as a friend again.