On Sunday night, Alex stayed in the common room with Mercy and Lauren, trying to keep life normal amid dorm chaos; their roommate Anna returned, privately calling them “witches” to her family. In the night the Bridegroom appeared outside Alex’s warded window, and Alex deferred their plan to contact Tara for one more day, deciding to prioritize helping Mercy first.

Monday morning, Alex visited Il Bastone to research glumae and arm herself. She gathered graveyard dirt, learned that winding a watch can distract constructs that mistake the ticking for a heartbeat, and retrieved a pocket watch and a CIA-era Manuscript mirror-compact from Lethe’s armory. Feeling sharper than usual, she went to class and lunch, then met the Bridegroom (North) to head for Tara’s apartment, noting how other Grays hid from him.

Alex navigated to the neighborhood near Science Park where Tara lived. Using the Manuscript mirror to spoof an identity, Alex slipped past the posted officer into the building. Inside the torn-apart apartment, she observed Tara’s attempts to make the space calming and personal despite police disruption, then moved to the bathroom seeking an intimate item suitable for the borderlands rite.

Alex found Tara’s retainer in a labeled case—an object she judged meaningfully personal and likely rich in Tara’s effluvia. She tested the connection by filling the sink and dropping the retainer; a pale hand appeared in the water to take it, and North manifested with the dripping retainer in his palm, confirming the link.

As Alex turned to leave, a massive man in a mechanic’s coveralls confronted her and immediately attacked. North tried to intervene but, being a Gray, could not affect the living man. Alex struck back to free herself and fled, but the attacker reappeared in front of the apartment door without opening it, as if using portal magic, briefly revealing a glimpse of a barren yard behind him.

Cornered and injured from impacts that likely broke her ribs and opened a scalp wound, Alex traded words with the man—he demanded to know who she was and who had hurt Tara, and she blamed Tara’s boyfriend to provoke him. He resumed choking her while North urged Alex to let him in, implying a risky possession as the only way he could act. The scene ended with Alex on the brink of blacking out, isolated and recognizing that only Darlington had ever truly understood what she might do next.