Lila barely had the strength left to lift her eyelids. But something close to obsession held her up, refusing to let her sink into that eternal night where there was no more pain or burden.
With the last of her strength, she painfully turned her head.
Her vision was blurred, figures shifting everywhere.
Wizards in gray robes silently closed in around her like the God of Death from legend. Their faces were hidden beneath the shadows of their hoods, but the man walking at the front wore no hood, as though he had no fear of being recognized.
The streetlights on the bridge illuminated his rather handsome face, and Lila's pupils contracted slightly.
She recognized that face.
"You are... Salem's... professor... Antoine Morrow?"
Antoine stopped a few steps away from her and looked down at her. With little expression on his face, he said, "I'm honored that Madam Piquery knows a little person like me."
Lila's consciousness struggled at the brink of dispersing as she spoke in fragments. "Fontana said... he met you... following Rolando Stern... He said you might be... might be Dumbledore's man... So we... we decided... to shake off the Scourers and... Prometheus... so they wouldn't... drag us down with them..."
Antoine smiled. "Oh? He thought I was sent by Dumbledore? Because of those British Aurors from before? He guessed there were other people lurking in the shadows, so he misunderstood my identity. Unfortunately, he guessed wrong. I serve Mr. Grindelwald."
His words drifted into Lila's ears, but to her, they had become unbearably blurred and distant. She could no longer hear them clearly.
Her life was rapidly slipping away, and even the pain had gone numb.
Yet at this moment of death, some things emerged with startling clarity, like reefs exposed by the retreating tide.
—Something