Su spent the next three days doing something she was historically terrible at: laying low.

  She stayed in the cathedral tower, venturing out only at night to forage (stealing from the same corrupt noble's kitchen garden repeatedly because spite was a valid motivation). She watched the city, listened to bird gossip, and tried very hard not to accidentally become more of a folk hero.

  It was the most boring seventy-two hours of her afterlife. "I'm going insane," she announced on the third morning. "I'm literally watching pigeons argue about territorial boundaries. This is what my life has become."

  Fernando, who'd been replanted in a nicer pot she'd stolen from a flower shop, rustled unsympathetically. "You could always go back to accidentally liberating the proletariat."

  "Don't tempt me."

  Below, in the cathedral, morning services had just ended. The priest—Father Emmett, she'd learned his name from eavesdropping—was tidying the shrine that had somehow grown larger. Someone had even carved her "likeness" into a wooden plaque, though it looked more like a very angry chicken than a peacock.

  "I look nothing like that," Su muttered.

  "You look exactly like that when you're mad."

  "I'm always mad."

  "My point exactly."

  A flutter of wings interrupted them. A small brown sparrow landed on Su's beam, panting heavily. "Big bird! Big bird!" the sparrow chirped frantically. "You're the one they're talking about, right? The shadow one?"

  Su blinked. "I—what?"

  "No time!" The sparrow hopped closer. "The black-robes! They're taking another one! Right now! By the east market!"

  Su's void-energy flared. "Another peacock?"

  "No! A swan! A big one, from the Duke's pond! They grabbed her with nets and a cage and she's screaming and—" The sparrow's wings drooped. "Nobody's helping. The humans just walk by. They think it's pest control."

  Su was moving before she'd consciously decided to. She grabbed Fernando's pot.

  "Wait—" Fernando started.

  "No time."

  "You're going to reveal yourself—"

  "Don't care."

  She dove out of the tower window, using Shadow Step to blur between buildings, following the sparrow's frantic directions.

  The east market was crowded with morning shoppers, which was exactly why the cultists had chosen it. Su perched on a roof overlooking the scene and felt her void-corruption surge with rage.

  Three figures in dark robes were loading a large cage onto a covered wagon. Inside the cage: a swan, magnificent and white, her wings beating against the bars while she let out distressed honking sounds that the humans completely ignored.

  Because to the humans, it just looked like animal control doing their job.

  But Su could see what they couldn't. Through her Lens of Procedural Insight, the cultists glowed with wrong energy—the same staticky, void-tainted power she'd sensed at the Weeping Stone in the first loop. And the swan wasn't just any swan.

  She was glowing too. Faintly, with the unmistakable shimmer of old magic.

  Sky-Dancer bloodline, Su realized. Distant, maybe. Diluted. The cultists were being methodical. One drove the wagon. Two stood guard, scanning for threats. But they weren't looking up.

  Su set Fernando down carefully. "Stay here."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Something stupid."

  "That's not a plan."

  "It's my brand."

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  She dropped from the roof into the alley beside the wagon, landing in shadow. The cultists hadn't seen her yet. She had maybe ten seconds before—

  One of them turned, sensing something. His hand went to a curved knife at his belt.

  Su didn't give him time to draw it.

  She activated Acoustic Terrorism at full blast, but focused—creating a sound that only the cultists could hear. The psychic equivalent of a flashbang: a shrieking, reality-bending wrongness that bypassed ears and went straight for the brain.

  All three cultists stumbled, clutching their heads. Su darted forward, using Precise Disassembly on the cage lock. It clicked open in two seconds.

  The swan burst free, wings fully extended, and immediately headbutted the nearest cultist in the stomach with shocking violence.

  Good bird, Su thought approvingly.

  But the cultists were recovering faster than expected. One lunged for Su, knife flashing. She dodged, barely, feeling the blade whistle past her neck.

  The second cultist was chanting something that made Su's borrowed void-energy recoil. The air around him started to shimmer and darken.

  Oh, these aren't just zealots. They're trained.

  The swan, sensing Su was the cause of her freedom, took flight—smashing into the chanting cultist's face with her wings before climbing into the sky. Smart bird.

  That left two cultists, one wagon, and Su, who was rapidly realizing she'd underestimated the opposition.

  The knife-wielder lunged again. This time Su used Shadow Step, blipping three feet to the left. The cultist's blade hit empty air.

  "What—" he started.

  Su didn't let him finish. She activated her Sonic Manipulation, creating a phantom sound behind him—the scrape of a blade on stone. He whirled, instinctively defensive.

  She hit him with a full-power kick to the back of his knee. He went down hard.

  One cultist left. The wagon driver, who'd been trying to escape, suddenly turned. Pulled back his hood.

  Su's blood froze. It wasn't a human face. It was a mask—bone-white, featureless except for two black eye holes that wept trails of ash. The same masks she'd seen in the first loop.

  And the voice that came from behind it was wrong. Too many voices layered together, speaking in perfect unison:

  "THE SPECKLESS ONE. THE STONE HUNGERS FOR YOUR STOLEN LIGHT."

  "Yeah, that's not creepy at all," Su muttered.

  The masked cultist raised both hands. The air around them thickened, becoming almost solid. Shadow-magic, but different from Vermilion's.

  Su felt the pressure like a vice around her chest. She couldn't breathe or move.

  Not good.

  The cultist took a step forward. "COME. THE WEEPING STONE CALLS. YOUR SACRIFICE WILL OPEN THE—"

  A rock hit him in the face.

  The pressure vanished. The cultist stumbled back, mask cracking.

  Su gasped for air and looked up.

  On the roof: Fernando, somehow, impossibly, had launched himself—pot and all—off the edge. The pot had shattered on the cultist's head, dirt exploding everywhere, and Fernando was now... well, he was lying in the street, looking extremely done with everything.

  But the distraction had worked.

  Su didn't waste it. She pulled on her void-corruption, channeling it into her claws, and raked across the cultist's chest. Not deep, she wasn't trying to kill but enough to tear the robe and break whatever ritual he'd been channeling.

  The cultist screamed, all three voices at once and staggered backward into the wagon. The other two cultists, recovering now, grabbed him and they fled, abandoning the wagon and disappearing into the crowd with unnatural speed.

  Su stood in the alley, panting, surrounded by broken pottery and very confused morning shoppers who'd just witnessed... something. They weren't sure what.

  "Did that bird just fight those men?"

  "No, that's impossible."

  "But I saw—"

  "It was probably... street performers? For charity?"

  The crowd, desperate for a rational explanation, seized on that. Street performers. Of course. That made sense.

  Su looked down at Fernando, who was covered in his own dirt again, several fronds bent at unfortunate angles.

  "You jumped off a roof," Su said quietly.

  "Yes."

  "You saved me."

  "Reluctantly."

  "You're a plant."

  "And yet, here we are."

  Su carefully gathered Fernando and his scattered dirt, placing him in an abandoned bucket that would have to serve as a temporary pot, again.

  "I'm getting you the nicest planter in the city," she said.

  "I don't want a nice planter. I want a quiet life. But I'm stuck with you."

  "I know."

  "You're the worst."

  "I know."

  Above them, the swan circled once, let out a triumphant honk, and flew north toward the Duke's pond.

  One bird saved but dozens more probably already taken. And the cultists had spoken to her. Not attacked blindly. They'd known who she was. What she was.

  "We need to leave," Fernando said. "They'll come back with reinforcements."

  "I know."

  "The cathedral isn't safe anymore."

  "I know."

  "You don't know what to do next, do you?"

  Su looked down at the scattered remains of the cultist's ritual components. "I know exactly what to do next," she said slowly. "I'm going to find their base. And I'm going to break it."

  "That's suicide."

  "Probably."

  "You're Level 14. They have organization, magic, and numbers."

  "I'm aware."

  "Then why—"

  "Because they called it a sacrifice."

  Su's void-energy flared, painting shadows across the alley walls. "They're not just kidnapping birds. They're killing them. For a ritual. And I'm done accidentally stumbling into being helpful. This time, I'm choosing it."

  Fernando was silent for a long moment. "You've finally lost it," he said eventually. "The loops have broken your brain."

  "Maybe." Su picked up the weeping eye token. Through her Lens, it glowed with threads leading somewhere. A connection. "But I'm going anyway. You coming?"

  "I'm a plant in a bucket. I don't have a choice."

  "You always have a choice."

  Fernando's fronds rustled. "Fine. But for the record, this is the worst decision you've made since throwing me at a dark peacock."

  "Noted." Su slipped into the shadows, following the glowing thread only she could see, carrying a judgmental fern in a bucket and absolutely no plan except "find cultists, break things."