At dawn, Charlie departs Claudia, who warns him to be quiet and avoid using the gun. With Radar coughing in the basket, he pedals through deserted outskirts that feel wrong, recalling Jenny Schuster and Lovecraft as the landscape turns increasingly eldritch. He reaches a storage shed marked with AB, shelters among old trolleys, and notes the monarch butterflies roosting above, which makes the area feel protected.

Overnight, Radar worsens. In the predawn, Charlie suspects something approached the trike and marked it; Radar responds by re-marking the wheel. When the bell tolls, he sets off toward the city wall and colossal gate braced by unsettling green staves. Speaking “Open in the name of Leah of the Gallien” triggers a titanic, screaming mechanism; the vertigo forces him to avert his eyes as the gate grinds open.

Inside, he passes a courtyard of shattered monarch statues and a butterfly-arched entry, then skirts a mephitic green pool where something briefly surfaces with teeth. Rain intensifies. He presses on into streets of warped shops and townhouses, where angles seem to slither at the edge of sight and trolley wires lie like dead serpents. He repeatedly spots AB marks and follows them through a confounding maze, all while keeping quiet and resisting the urge to use the revolver.

As Radar coughs and shivers under a blanket, Charlie senses an unseen follower, hears footfalls and whispers near underground openings, and realizes the marks are guiding him around the palace’s flank—toward a back way. He navigates flooded stretches and crumbling boulevards lined with dangerous, heat-snapping carnivorous flowers, using fading AB arrows to stay on course.

Finally, the route delivers him to a square with a cracked green fountain and a sprawling yellow house that spans the road. Confirming Claudia’s notes, he takes cover behind the fountain pedestal and, looking out, sees Hana outside the yellow house.