Santi nods. He can’t trust himself to speak. He almost couldn’t bear to go to the clock tower; it felt like stepping on unholy ground. He only stayed long enough to read the words she had written there. FOLLOW THE LIGHT. It hit him like a cruel joke. What else has he been trying to do, all these many lives? And what has Thora done but drag him again and again into darkness?

She knocks his arm in friendly rebuke. “What took you so long?”

“I only just arrived.”

Thora frowns. She’s settled on a hair color, the rainbow he remembers dulled to the blue of an evening sky. He wonders if it’s a Thora costume, her way of making believe she’s the same person every time. When did she start thinking that way? When did he start thinking of himself as multiple, a series of watercolor portraits on glass? Like Thora said last time, they have been slowly changing sides. “I don’t get it,” she says. “We died together. We’re clearly the same age. Why did we still arrive here at different times?”

We died together. How easily she says it: as if they crashed in the same car, or fell victim to the same slow disease. He remembers taking her hand. He remembers falling in the dark, terror and rushing air and too-late regret. But he doesn’t recognize the person who made that memory. The act is a horror: a fault line in who he is that he doesn’t think he will ever come to terms with.

He remembers the moment of impact, the face that looked back at him when he died. Long-haired, shadowed, with eyes that saw him at his lowest and knew him for what he was.

He was sure—is still sure—that what is needed from them is atonement: a meaningful, deliberate sacrifice. There, inside the darkness of the tower, he believed that what he had to sacrifice was himself. He marvels at how completely Thora twisted his thinking. Joining her in self-annihilation was the easy way out. The true path to redemption will be harder: so hard that when he sees it, his soul will cry out against it. He is determined that this time, he will not fail.

Thora tilts her head. “Are you okay?”

Santi blinks. “You just walked through the wall,” he points out.

“Yeah. I’ve been busy.” Thora holds out her hand. He hesitates. Impatient, she grabs him and pulls him through solid stone.

It’s a strange feeling—a humming in his ears, a split-second gap in his existence—but not unfamiliar. Santi emerges into the dark interior of the lighthouse with the same wonder as when he passed through the wall in the university to find himself under the stars. “A miracle,” he says under his breath.

“A mistake.” Thora lets go of his hand. “We’re not supposed to be able to get in here.”