- Liza climbs a tree and descends into a fevered dream, stumbling home and cutting her hair with a knife, then discovering an egg that she may also be in. Then she wakes up. The egg is still there.
- Ovida converses with He, Death as she gazes over a shard of herself plunged into Cora's corpse. She asks if the two of them killed her, and he asks her "who else?". Ovida considers how she once would have screamed or broken down, but doesn't, now.
- Cora's ghost awakens outside the gates of the Bleak Academy. She is alone. She is so very alone and there is nothing here but her and the Gates. Eventually, time passes and she forces her way through and walks a path of thorns.
- Liza continues to be dreaming and in and out of the egg. She forces a seed into Pitohui's throat and then she is Pitohui, and she feels that seed twisting and transforming her, and she looks down at herself as she changes.
- Cora marches through the Academy and runs into Canonica, who pulls her aside and asks what she's doing here and why she's naked, before Cora points out she's dead1. Several exchanges later, Cora has put on a crown of liquid fire that doesn't really address the nudity question and Canonica asks her about what she's looking for (her corpse) and where she'd find it (a courtyard, somewhere, with a sick orb with legs hotrod). The interaction manages to be surprisingly grounding for Cora, and Canonica takes her to a dissection she needs to do first before she can help Cora with her body problem.
- The Unicorn Witch aches with loneliness and Ovida answers its call, telling it more of her philosophy on longing. It objects increasingly weakly, and Ovida kisses it. It pulls away and feels it is being mocked, and Ovida inspires it with the beauty she sees in the bleak possibilities to be found in the endless quest for longing. The Witch shivers, and reaches out to kiss her again.
- Liza is in the egg again, surrounded by past and future selves she's encountered, been, or seen, before there's a cracking and the shell cracks, letting in the sky. She awakens truly in bed with Basilisk, covered in albumen and sweat. After establishing a bit about what the fuck was happening, Basilisk guided Liza to the bathroom to clean up, where they found that in addition to her hair having been actually cut, she'd grown in iridescent feathers. Liza theorizes it may have something to do with the bit of Pitohui that she ate before planting her into a tree. Basilisk tries to scrounge some things to help with Liza's nausea but isn't very good at it; eventually as Liza gets more together and clean, she goes to find Aspechka and make some kind of proper meal to help2. Liza examines her new look in the mirror and decides she likes it.
- Canonica finishes her esoteric dissection and Cora wanders the Academy, gathering a bunch of students to follow her, until eventually she arrives at her corpse. She returns it to a semblance of living and steps into it, possessing her living-dead body as briars are on the cusp of blooming, pierced through her heart. The crown of Majesty raises above her head, and her ghostly hands rest below her flesh ones, dripping with liquid fire. Using this fire, she sketches changes upon the Academy alongside Ovida's help to drag He, Death to her, and she challenges him to strike her down once more. He approaches and inflicts her with despair, inviting her to either join him at the Academy or finally strike back at him in her silly game. She obliges, and makes him into something that Is.
A Transition is invoked. The Headmaster is usurped. The wheel turns.
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rider necromancers have a history of being kinda bad at telling the living and dead apart, especially when they're that deep in the Outside
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they settle on some kind of savory porridge or congee, with some argument over whether or not Liza's should have an egg. Basilisk is not very good at cooking past some basics, while Aspechka has solid fundamentals but isn't like, a chef or anything