She found it in an unlikely place: , a disgraced Inquisitor of the Sunken Temple. He had been assigned to investigate the Lily Service years ago, only to be framed for corruption and exiled to the lower tiers. He lived in a cellar, drinking away his memories, until a white-haired girl dropped a stolen crystal vial of Lily Cordial onto his table.

"The Lily Service," she said to her guests, "is not charity. It is cultivation. The Grey Rot does not merely sicken—it awakens. In these children, the Rot burned away the mundane, leaving behind a rare, malleable soul-stuff. We call them . Their emotions, their memories, their very identities—they can be pruned. Reshaped."

The plague known as the Grey Rot had come seven years ago, leaving behind a harvest of orphans. They called them the "Ashpetals"—children with hollow cheeks and ancient eyes, named for the way they scattered at the first sign of city guards.

Lady Vane laughed. "What will you do, gutter child? Drown yourself?"

The sound of guards—real guards, from the upper-tier judiciary—filled the corridors. Lady Vane sighed, smoothed her gown, and walked toward them with her head high. The last Elara saw of her was the silver lily on her back, glinting in the emergency lights. The Lily Service was dismantled. The Harvesters were tried—those who could not buy their way free, and even some who could, thanks to the public outcry. The Sisters' order was disbanded. The children were returned to the lower tiers, but this time with something new: trust funds, counselors, and a law forbidding any "soul-altering charity" under penalty of permanent exile to the Ash Wastes.

But Elara needed proof the upper-tier courts would believe. And she needed help.

"You've destroyed years of work," she said softly. "Do you know what they'll do to me? The Harvesters have long memories."