Bailey enters the paper-animal tent again and finds it changed: the fog is gone, the tent is finite, and every bird, bat, butterfly, and animal is perfectly motionless. A nearly transparent man in a dark suit stands beside a white stag and introduces himself as Marco. Marco explains that Tsukiko tried to imprison him in the bonfire, and that he was “pulled apart and put back together again” in a dispersed, insubstantial state.

As Marco leads Bailey through the frozen menagerie, Bailey accidentally knocks down a raven and breaks its wings. Marco is able to handle and repair it, suggesting he can touch circus elements he created more easily than others. Marco guides Bailey toward another tent, warning him to be careful, because the circus is not behaving normally.

They enter the acrobat tent and find a suspended party: performers and guests are frozen mid-action, wine hanging in midair, music halted, bodies statue-still. Marco reveals the entire circus has been suspended to buy time, though Tsukiko remains unaffected “by her own rules.” Bailey spots Widget frozen mid-story and Poppet halted mid-turn, her hair floating as if underwater; as they move through, a ribbon-suspended chair snaps and crashes near Widget, heightening the danger of the failing suspension.

Bailey slips into the Wishing Tree tent, where a towering candle-covered tree glows. There he finds Marco embracing Celia, who is as transparent as Marco. Celia tells Bailey they need his help: the circus is drifting without an anchor, and they want Bailey to take over as caretaker. Celia insists Bailey truly has a choice, but admits that if Bailey walks away, the circus “won’t last,” and Marco implies their fate would be grim if it fails.

Celia explains what must be done: the bonfire needs to be lit to power half the circus, and Bailey must also take on the other half—something Celia carries and would have to transfer to him—binding Bailey to the circus permanently and limiting how long Bailey can be away. Bailey recognizes the scale of the commitment but chooses the circus anyway and agrees to stay and do what is needed. Marco makes the commitment official by heating his own ring from a candle on the Wishing Tree and burning the circle into Bailey’s palm as a binding; Marco admits his long-ago wish on the tree was for Celia. When the pain fades, Bailey asks what he must do next.