On a train through Germany in 1872, Addie LaRue sits in the dining car, awed by human invention and speed, until a conductor asks for her ticket. Addie pretends she left it in her room, but the conductor follows her down the corridor, forcing her to improvise.

Before Addie can bluff her way into an empty compartment, a door opens onto Luc, who smoothly claims Addie as his “wife” and produces a ticket to satisfy the conductor. Once they are alone, Addie rejects the pretense and insists she did not need help, but Luc draws her into darkness that reveals itself as his true nature, swallowing the train and the world.

The darkness releases them onto the steps of an opera house in a city Addie does not yet recognize as Munich; her travel clothes have been replaced with a fine gown, and Luc is dressed for the evening. Inside, they take a front box for Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and Luc offers Champagne, marking the night as their “anniversary.”

Addie is overwhelmed by the opera’s scale and emotion, wanting to preserve the feeling forever. She notices Luc watching her reaction instead of the stage, pleased in a way that is neither mocking nor cruel, and she later realizes this is the first night he does not ask her to surrender her soul.

During the interval, Luc asks if Addie can guess which performers are “his,” meaning bound to him by bargains; he says he is not there to claim them tonight, but will soon. Addie challenges why artists would trade their lives for short glory, and Luc answers that time destroys talent and that, in the end, people want to be remembered—words that cut at Addie’s own curse.

After the opera, Addie asks about the strangest bargain Luc has made, and he cites Joan of Arc, who traded her soul for a blessed sword that protected her only while she held it. Luc argues that greatness demands sacrifice and that Joan became a legend; he admits mourning wasted talent but insists all great art has a cost. Left alone later, Addie replays the opera in memory and quietly wonders whether the souls Luc takes are ever a fair price for beauty that lasts.