Elara pressed herself into a drainpipe, heart hammering. The Lily Service. She had heard the name before, spoken in hushed tones by older orphans who had since disappeared. A charity, they said. A noblewoman named Lyselle Vane who collected the forgotten children of the Rot and gave them a new life.

She slipped inside as the Sisters unloaded their cargo—a dozen children, all glassy-eyed and docile. Elara crept through service corridors, her bare feet silent on cold stone, until she found a grate overlooking a vast hall.

Elara screamed his name. He did not turn back. The carriage door closed like a mouth. The next morning, Elara did the only thing her fear would allow: she followed. She stowed away beneath the carriage, clinging to the axle as it climbed the spiraling roads to the upper tier. The air grew sweeter, the shadows thinner. At last, the carriage passed through gates of wrought silver and into the grounds of the Vane Conservatory , a sprawling estate of white marble and gardens where lilies grew in unnatural, perpetual bloom.

She gestured to a girl standing placidly by the pool: Elara's friend, Pip. But Pip's eyes were no longer his own. They were mirrors.

Elara burned the note. She kept the lily. She hung it on the wall as a reminder: beauty could be a weapon. But so could a small, stubborn girl with nothing left to lose.

The night came. The Chrysalis Chamber blazed with light. A hundred children stood in rows, their eyes already clouding with the Sisters' sedative. The Harvesters circled like sharks. Kaelen slipped into the server vault, his hands shaking as he connected the ledger. Elara crawled through the ventilation shafts, a set of stolen keys clutched in her teeth.

"Every garden has its rot. Tend yours well."

The children flocked to them. Elara saw her friend, a boy named Pip, take the vial. He drank. His eyes widened with bliss. Then he smiled, took a Sister's hand, and walked to the carriage.

"The Lily Service," she said to her guests, "is not charity. It is cultivation. The Grey Rot does not merely sicken—it awakens. In these children, the Rot burned away the mundane, leaving behind a rare, malleable soul-stuff. We call them . Their emotions, their memories, their very identities—they can be pruned. Reshaped."

The second laughed, a dry, rattling sound. "A bed, yes. And then a box. You know what happens to those Ashpetals. They go in pretty. They come out... not."

Two guards huddled over a brazier, their brass armor fogging in the cold.

"Tonight," Lady Vane continued, "you will bid on the finest blooms. A child's essence, distilled into a . One dose grants eternal youth. Three doses grant the ability to step between shadows. Five..." She smiled. "Five grants immortality. The Grey Rot took their futures. We merely... repurpose them."

Elara clamped a hand over her mouth. The bidding began. A Harvester in a ruby mask bought a boy of seven for three thousand gold crowns. A woman with serpentine jewelry purchased twin girls. Each child was led to a silver chair beside the mercury pool. A Sister placed a lily-shaped helmet over their head. There was no scream, no blood. Just a soft, final sigh as their essence drained into a waiting crystal vial. The child left behind was alive but hollow—a smiling, empty thing destined for the lower tiers as a "rehabilitated ward." Elara fled the grate. She ran until she found a forgotten greenhouse, choked with weeds and broken pots. There, she vomited. Then she wept. Then, slowly, rage replaced grief.

Not their alarms. Lady Vane's.