"Miss Elpis. Uh, Miss Elpis?"

Elpis woke with a gasp, her hand instinctively pulling a dagger out of her boot. The silver of the blade flashed in the firelight as she swung it towards the voice-

And then she barely stopped herself from ramming it through Talcott's throat.

The boy's skin paled, eyes wide with fear, and it took Elpis' brain a second to catch up. Then, with a slowly released breath, she dropped the knife to the wooden floor where it landed with a dull thud.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, backing away from Talcott. Her hand trembled and she clenched it. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"N-no," Talcott said. It broke her heart to hear him try to sound brave and how his voice cracked despite his best efforts. "I shouldn't have surprised you. I'm sorry, Miss Elpis."

Elpis rubbed her eyes, loathing her hypervigilance, how it didn't allow her to relax even in what was meant to be the safest city in the world. What if she hadn't stopped herself? What if she had killed a child because she was too used to sleeping in the outside, where monsters were only all too happy to try to kill her in her sleep?

"Don't blame yourself," Elpis said, her voice hoarse from sleep and restrained emotion. "Just... don't."

Standing unsteadily, causing the woven blanket to fall away from her, Elpis moved away from Talcott. A wave of dizziness threatened to overwhelm her, but Elpis pushed past it and forced herself to keep walking. Briefly, she considered that Stella and Aranea had a point - she was running herself ragged. More often than not, she didn't eat as much as she should, saving whatever food she had for the survivors she found. She didn't sleep much anymore, either. If she slept, it meant someone might die. If she stayed awake, then she could maybe-

"Maybe I can save just one more person," Ardyn had said, in a time long since past. "If I only work a little harder-"

"You have to rest," Elpis had told him. "I don't care if Bahamut himself came down to us right now and said you had to keep working. I would tell him to-"

Ardyn had turned towards her and pressed a finger to her lips, smiling fondly, a small heat in his blue eyes. "Careful, my divine," he had said, quietly. "Touched as I am that you would turn heretic for me, I shan't ask it of you."

Elpis put a hand against the doorframe and leaned against it heavily. Each of her muscles were tense and hurt to move; there was a weary ache deep in her bones.

It wasn't just that if she worked hard enough, she could save everyone. Maybe if she made herself hurt enough, it would keep others from being hurt as well.

"Miss Elpis?"

Elpis kept her head against the doorframe and her eyes closed. "Yes, Talcott?"

"Are you... okay? Should I get Miss Stella or Ignis?"

"No," Elpis said. With the worst of the weakness gone, she stood upright once more and squared her shoulders. "I'm fine. Just need something to eat. Let's go see what's in the kitchens. We can eat while we wait for Ignis to come back from the Hunter's Headquarters."

Although he looked like he wanted to argue, Talcott merely nodded and joined her as she made her way to the kitchens. Thanks to the Hunters and the kindness of everyone in Lestallum, the orphanage was one of the places that always had an abundance of food. Volunteers came by every day to prepare the meals.

Judging from the relative silence coming from the rooms, Elpis had slept through breakfast, and the volunteers had left to tend to their other duties until dinner. Lunch was no longer really a thing people did - instead, they snacked throughout the day, then ate a large meal before bed.

The marble counters of the kitchens were laid out with food that anyone could come by and grab. Elpis sighed as she picked up a roll. She was heartily sick of bread. Unfortunately it was one of the few things that could still be made in the Long Night. What she wouldn't give for some of Erastus' cooking these days.

As she rummaged around in a refridgerator for butter, Elpis called out to Talcott, "Did you find anything?"

"Yeah!"

Over the last five years, Ignis had taken to exploring the world, looking for anything that could prove helpful in overcoming the prophecy. For a time, Prompto and Gladio had joined him. Then, as they all began to go their separate ways, Talcott had stepped in to help. Now, if Elpis happened to be in Lestallum at the same time as Ignis, he had her go over what he found. Most times, it was nothing. Sometimes, she caught a brief reference to herself or Ardyn in an ancient text, a dizzying experience. Those times were rare. And so far, they hadn't found anything of use.

A long pause followed Talcott's exclamation, long enough that Elpis finally glanced over at him.

His uncertain eyes met hers. "But... Ignis said we have to wait for him."

Elpis paused in the middle of buttering the roll. She eyed the boy. "Why is that? Where did you go?"

"Um," Talcott said, clearly torn. "We went all over, at first. But Ignis wanted... to go to the Disc of Cauthess before we came back. He said he had a, uh, 'hunch'. Like the kind my grandpa used to get."

"Okay," Elpis said, uncertain why going to the Disc had left Talcott nervous. She briefly tried to remember anything she learned of the Disc in school, years ago, but she had always been bored with the lessons about the Gods and Kings. All she could come up with was that the Disc was where the Titan had resided until Noctis had forged a covenant with him five years before. Now there was only the Meteor and the powerplant.

Who knew the lessons I ignored in school might actually come in handy one day? Elpis thought idly. Now that she had her memories back, she recognized her disinterest for what it was - her past life echoing into her new one, trying to tell her that something wasn't quite right. She simply hadn't been able to hear it for what it was at the time.

Talcott watched her warily as she heated up a bowl of oatmeal for him. The smell of warm cinnamon filled the air. Finally, he said, "Don't tell Ignis I said anything, okay?"

"Sure."

"The Disc was where the Mystic's tomb was," Talcott said. "Y'know, the Founder King?"

The spoon she'd been holding clattered to the floor. Her scar twinged painfully as she gripped the edge of the counter to steady herself. The microwave beeped cheerfully, but Elpis didn't move to take Talcott's oatmeal out of it.

Finally, after a beat, she said, "Oh."

Her mind whirled. Vague memories of looking at pictures in a history book at school came back to her. The blurry outline of crumbling cruins, the line of the Titan's hulking form, and then an illustration of what the tomb might look like. Somnus had been buried there, after he had died of old age, something Elpis had never had the chance to do. Something Ardyn had never had the chance to do.

Swallowing down her anger, Elpis merely nodded once, then gave Talcott his oatmeal.

"Okay," was all she managed.

"I really shouldn't say any more," Talcott said.

"I'm surprised you were able to hold yourself back as much as you did."

Talcott's entire face burned red as Ignis appeared in the doorway of the kitchens. "S-sir! I'm sorry-"

Ignis waved away Talcott's anxiety as he carefully approached the island. Since he wasn't often in the orphanage, he wasn't as sure in his footsteps as he was elsewhere in the city. The tip of his cane hit the side of the island and his hand found a stool. Ignis hoisted himself up with more grace than most others.

"Welcome back," Elpis said, already filling a kettle with water to start a batch of Ebony.

Ignis nodded his thanks once she set a mug in front of him. Turning slightly in Talcott's direction, he said, "Would you mind leaving us alone, Talcott?"

Eager to make amends for earlier, Talcott nodded quickly and rushed off. They both waited until his footsteps receded deeper into the orphanage to speak.

"Aranea told me the Hunters don't want you speaking to me," Elpis said.

Ignis took a sip of coffee before saying, "Rather bold of you to assume I care what they want."

Elpis squinted. "Were you-did you just quote a meme?"

"I did know something of the internet before," Ignis said, his tone dry. "I cooperate with the Hunters for now, but I'm not part of their organization. I tell them what I believe they need to know. When it comes to information pertaining to you or Ardyn... it's a need-to-know basis, and they don't need to know."

How was it that she had inspired at least two people to play rebel? Elpis wasn't certain how to respond to such a sentiment-at least, not when it wasn't coming from Ardyn-so she merely nodded.

"It's true that we found something at Somnus' tomb," Ignis said. "A door, which I believe leads to a dungeon or labyrinth, like the Pitioss ruins in Hulldagh Pixe."

"You believe?" Elpis asked. "You don't know?"

"No," Ignis said. "Because the door wouldn't open. We tried."

I think I don't like where this is going, Elpis thought.

"There was a sigil on the door," Ignis said. "In the shape of a sun."

And there it is.

"You think you need me to open the door?" Elpis scoffed lightly. "That's something of a leap. Why would he construct something that could never be opened? That labyrinth would have had to have been built after I died, and as far as he knew, I was never coming back to the mortal realm."

Elpis paused, remembering the document that Verstael Besithia had called the Gospel of Charis. In it, Charis had said others had dreams about her, about her coming back to life.

Was it possible Somnus had a similar dream?

"I don't know," Ignis was saying. "But I do know it may be our only way. And if there's something inside, it may be important. Those ruins have been studied by scholars for centuries, yet I've never heard of a door that couldn't be opened by anyone or anything. Talcott almost didn't see it at first. It's as if it was keeping itself hidden until now. This may be the thing that can save Noct."

"And if it's not?"

"Then we keep searching."

Elpis pondered Ignis' words, her gaze on her hands. Somnus had tolerated her for Ardyn's sake when she'd been alive, and she had likewise been distantly civil. If Ardyn hadn't been the glue keeping them together, neither one of them would have spoken to each other much at all. Had he felt any remorse at her death by his hand? He had over Ardyn's death. She had seen it. But her own...

The idea that Somnus created some secret dungeon that only she could open was preposterous. The chance that there was anything inside of value had to be one in a million.

And yet.

If there was something that could save Noctis and Ardyn beyond that door, that could prove a way around the prophecy, then wasn't her choice made for her? How could she go to Ardyn in Insomnia one day knowing she hadn't exhausted all avenues? Knowing she hadn't looked into every possible path, every possible hint? She owed him better. Not only Ardyn, but Noctis and his friends as well.

Elpis owed them all whatever she could give.

Finally she said, "Okay. Let's give it a try."

It was all she could do.

Though Stella huffed in annoyance, she couldn't stop Elpis from setting out again. It helped that the Disc wasn't far from Lestallum; by chocobo, it wouldn't take them long to reach at all.

They said their goodbyes to Talcott and Stella at the stable where Elpis had left Aquila. Talcott was obviously disappointed that he wasn't getting to go as well. Ignis had deemed it too much of a risk, and Elpis had agreed. Neither one of them knew what, exactly, waited for them behind the door. It could be nothing, but they weren't willing to put Talcott in any more danger than he was usually in when he traversed the daemon-infested world.

Vincent met them at the city gate with happy yips. Ignis' chocobo gave a worried quark and ruffled its golden feathers, calming only when Ignis stroked its long neck.

Their journey passed in companionable silence which was broken only by the occasional quark from the chocobos and Vincent's paws hitting the ground. Every now and then Elpis saw eyes glowing in the woods and knew that daemons were watching her. They never attacked, which meant they belonged to Ardyn and not Eos or Bahamut. Somehow, even after five years, Ardyn's daemons were almost reverent towards her, and they never attacked. The ones that did were not controlled by him.

It was one of the few reasons she could freely move about in the outside. For a time, Elpis had tried to stay in various towns to see if her presence would keep the daemons at bay entirely. It had worked on Ardyn's daemons, though they howled furiously at the outskirts to be let in. It had not worked with the rest; in fact, they seemed drawn to her. Eventually she stopped staying anywhere for more than a day or two.

Now, nothing stopped them on their path to the Disc. The highways were still in good condition and would last for another twenty years-though Elpis hated to imagine the Long Night lasting that long. It was harder on the chocobos to run on concrete, but they had little choice, as the woods had too many small spaces for them to be ambushed. The open space of the highway would provide better room for them to fight if they had to.

Once the woods gave way to the grasslands and cliffs of the Disc, they let their chocobos rest a moment. As she surveyed their surroundings, Elpis began to fidget, a new worry working its way into her mind.

Somehow, without seeing her, Ignis picked up on her anxiety. "What is it?"

"I'm just now questioning the wisdom of going underground," Elpis said, a slightly wry note in her voice. "If I were Eos and I wanted to kill someone, burying them underground would be a good way to do it."

Ignis frowned. "The thought had crossed my mind as well. It's a risk we'll simply have to take."

"Then again," Elpis said, "I'm pretty sure that they've had a lot of chances to kill me by now."

"Which begs the question of why they haven't," Ignis said. He pushed his darkened glasses up, a sign Elpis had come to recognize as him thinking. "If I had to make an educated guess, I would say they're waiting for something."

"They don't believe we can win," Elpis said quietly as she petted Aquila's neck. His feathers ruffled happily. "They think the prophecy will play out exactly as they want it to, so what's the point in even wasting energy killing me now? Noctis is in the Crystal, Ardyn is..."

She swallowed hard, unable to say it. If she thought about it too long, she was liable to break down entirely. "Anyway. Is this really where Somnus was buried?"

Ignis accepted her change of subject easily. "No," Ignis said. "All the regents are interred at the Citadel. These tombs were merely dedications to the lands they claimed in life, and decoys for those who may want to deface them. There's a reason why most of them still stand and were never destroyed by the Empire; they knew the remains were in Insomnia. In any case, the Mystic's tomb was destroyed during Noct's meeting with the Archaeon."

Somehow, Elpis felt better knowing that she wasn't about to be near Somnus' remains. What would she have done if the tomb were still present? Would she have let her rage rule her and destroy it? Or would she have simply let it be?

There was no way to know now. Elpis pushed the thought away.

Once the chocobos had rested a bit, they continued on their way. At some point in the last five years, the wall surrounding the Disc had begun to fall, most likely beginning with the earthquakes caused by the Titan during the covenant and then later by daemon attacks. That meant they could simply ride their chocobos on through and not have to worry about scaling it.

Vincent, however, seemed hesitant to walk on the ground. His three noses sniffed at the air, then he whined, pawing at the dirt. Six eyes stared balefully at Elpis.

"What's wrong?" Ignis asked.

Instead of answering right away, Elpis jumped down from Aquila. Kneeling, she put a hand to the ground. A slight tingle spread from her fingertips up her arm until she pulled her hand away.

"This was holy land for millennia," Elpis said to Ignis. "Five years isn't long enough to dispel Titan's effects on the earth. That's why the daemons attacked the wall so often so they could get inside. Once they did, they could corrupt the area until it was no longer painful for them to walk on it."

She patted each of Vincent's heads and knelt in front of him. "It's okay," she said. "You don't have to follow me in. Ardyn would understand."

Actually, he probably wouldn't. The man was known to put himself through hell to stay by her side and would expect nothing less of his creatures. But Elpis didn't tell Vincent that.

Vincent whined again. Elpis smiled and scritched his ears. "Tell you what," she said, "why don't we leave the chocobos here and Vincent can guard them while we're gone? It's not too far to the ruins, right?"

"It's not," Ignis said. "Though if we have to make a hasty retreat, I would prefer the chocobos be there with us."

Elpis sighed. She couldn't argue against that. She gave Vincent another scritch behind each of his ears. "Wait outside, okay? I know you want to protect me, and I appreciate that, but I don't want you to hurt yourself."

The daemon huffed with indecision, then slowly turned and walked back to the wall, tail between his legs. His heads took turns glancing back at her before he finally reached the opening they had climbed through. With a very audible sigh that she could hear even at her distance, Vincent slumped down to the ground, eyes watching her.

"I'm not sure what unnerves me most," Ignis said as Elpis climbed back onto Aquila's saddle. "The fact that you talk to the daemon as if it listens, or the fact that it does appear to understand you and is entirely willing to do what you ask."

Elpis laughed quietly. "Welcome to the Long Night."

Ignis wasn't the first person to express such concerns and Elpis was certain he wouldn't be the last. In truth, it had frightened her at first, too. There were too many implications in it that she wasn't sure she wanted to poke at. She supposed she should take heart that no monster was truly so far gone that they couldn't be saved, that they couldn't be reminded of what they had once been.

If that were true, then Ardyn wasn't as damned as he believed himself to be.

"We're here."

Ignis' voice brought Elpis out of her thoughts. She dismounted Aquila and turned on her flashlight, squinting into the dark. All that met her were brown rocks and dried lava. A dead tree twisted painfully at the entrance to the ruins proper.

"It was to the left of the entrance," Ignis said. "As I said, it was hard for Talcott to find at first."

"I don't-wait."

There. Her flashlight had almost passed over it entirely until a sheen of gold sparkled. Elpis approached the rocky wall and saw an outline of a sun, just as Ignis and Talcott had said there would be.

"I've found it," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Her heart began beating fast in her chest.

The etching was old and almost impossible to see. Elpis looked until she saw a line that seemed to form a door. Swallowing hard, she turned to Ignis. "Right, then. Do you have your weapon ready?"

"Of course." He sounded faintly offended by the idea that he would never be anything less than absolutely prepared.

Elpis turned off her flashlight and pocketed it, her bodylight providing enough glow to see by. The weight of her stave was comforting in her palm.

At first, she wasn't entirely certain what to do. If there were some spell in place to open it, she certainly didn't know it. Then she paused.

"Of course," Elpis breathed. "The cave."

Ignis frowned. "What was that?"

"When I first took Ardyn and the others into the desert, we had to take shelter from a sandstorm. There was a cave with sigils etched around the entrance to keep the sand out. Like the havens do now." She let out a short, breathless laugh, shaking her head. For some reason, she truly hadn't believed Somnus had left this here for her until now.

"All I'd had to do was... touch it."

As she'd said that, Elpis pressed her hand against the sun rune. The rock was surprisingly hot under her touch, as if it had been under the sun all day instead of covered in shadows. A second passed. Then another. Disappointment was beginning to take hold when the rune began to glow with a golden light. The line of the door followed shortly after, and in between one breath and the next, the rock itself disappeared as if it had never been at all.

Darkness waited for them beyond.

"I sense nothing," Ignis said. "I suppose that's as much of a welcome as we're going to receive."

"Wait," Elpis said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I think you should stay out here, actually."

Ignis' frown deepened. "I think that is a terrible idea. We don't know what's inside. If you were hurt-"

"Then I'm hurt," Elpis finished. "You can go back for help, if need be. If we're both hurt down there, then we both die down there. One of us needs to be alive to keep looking for a way out of the prophecy."

Ignis clearly wanted to argue more, but he couldn't deny her plan made sense. With a long suffering sigh, he nodded. "I shall wait here. Like the dog," he added under his breath.

"Thank you," Elpis said, meaning it.

Before she could rethink the wisdom of her plan, she stepped into the warm dark to see what Somnus had left for her to find.