I hate experiencing what he did to become head of the Ratel. He killed so many people through his favorite method: torture by dreams. He experimented on Zeal until it split and became the drug he truly wanted: Verve. I have to live through those pockets of horror and pain: the fate I would be experiencing right now, if not for Kim and her code. A fate I might still face. Where is the real Ensi? I feel him in here, somewhere.

We’ve reached the end of the memories. We have passed through the swamp, and up ahead is the Hearth. He never left it, not truly. It’s always in his head, too. I remember Mia tapping her temple. None of us ever truly left, did we?

Nazarin and I reach the end of the muck, climbing out and setting foot on solid ground.

It’s a short walk to the town. It’s similar to how I remember it, though there are fewer houses, as the Brother left decades before my sister and I did. It even smells the same, like redwoods, earth, the sulfur of the swamp, the chimney smoke from the houses.

“Where is this?” Nazarin asks.

“Home,” I say, not sure if the answer is truth or a lie.

The green mist thins, wisping around our ankles. I catch Nazarin’s hand. It feels like I’m really touching him, even though in reality he’s a few feet away from me, strapped to his Chair. But my brain sends an impulse, and so Nazarin’s skin seems warm.

The brain is so very capable of lying to itself.

We walk through the pathways, the sky still the same twilight. Most of the flowers in the gardens are closed, their little heads nodded in sleep.

“It’s peaceful,” Nazarin says. “This is very strange.”

“It’s his fortress,” I reply. “The quietest corner of the mind. He created it in the image of the Hearth. Perhaps he knows something’s wrong with the code.”

“So he’s come here to hide.”

“I think so.”

“Where?”

I think of the memory where he felt safest. “The chapel.”

We turn a corner of a path, and there it is. It’s an innocuous building, made of wood and painted white. My memories of the place blend with Ensi’s. We spent so many hours within its interior growing up. So many hours of Confession, of sermons, singing and whispering and praying. I once loved going into that building. Tila was always more suspicious than me of Mana-ma and the whole Hearth’s creed. For most of my young life, though, I was a believer.