The candlestick struck the hidden copper button, releasing the scent of melting beeswax—identical to her mother's unfinished lipstick on her deathbed. Five hundred twenty-seven gypsum figurines cascaded from the wall, each wrapped in yellowed letters curling into ash moths in the flames. Lucas blocked spattering wax with his prosthetic hand, the scar refracting prismatic light that hit the crystal surface of Ayla's clavicle bolt.
(Crushing the edge-most figurine, gypsum dust mingling with dried blood under her nails)
"How many times did you spy on me sculpting?" She pressed the shard to his throat. "With those mechanical eyes stolen from Odile's lab?"
An unfinished wolf statue rolled out, iris petal wedged between fangs. Lucas coughed violently, cerulean threads seeping through fingers—droplets etching a micro-map of Odile's ventilation system onto the petal, each corner marked with red dots like dormant bombs.
Eric's laughter seeped through corridor shadows, his pocket watch chain scraping floor in sync with alarms: "Young Master carves these trinkets on full moons. Says beeswax smoke fools heartbeat monitors..."
Ayla kicked the wolf statue. The base's date froze her pupils—June 12, 2003, 3 AM. Shattering the hollow interior, a micro-tape played Lucas' teenage voice through static:
"They removed your hippocampus today. I carved 320 gypsum wolves in the vents. Odile said each absorbs 1% of your pain...but I carved 'sorry' on every paw."
(Firelight flickered, casting all figurine shadows as her mother's ring hologram)
Lucas lunged for the tape, prosthetic joints gummed with molten wax. Ayla saw micro-gears branded with Odile's codes spinning counterclockwise under his skin: "Your annual anonymous letters..."
"Were painkiller receipts." He snapped his wax-sealed index finger. "Every post-op analgesic came from forged medical files."
Alarms screeched. Eric kicked open a deeper compartment—hundreds of unopened "Rust Iris" lipsticks, her mother's signature shade. Bottom glass tubes preserved mechanical eyeballs with matching iris patterns to Lucas' prosthetics.
"The night of his eye surgery," the butler lifted an eyeball with tweezers, "he kept begging not to burn the studio vents."
Ayla's nape scar burned. She finally understood the scraping sounds during her first Thorn Wolf sculpture weren't rats—it was teenage Lucas carving in vents, bloodied gypsum dust falling into her licorice jar.
(Fifth lipstick melted into her mother's ring shape, "L for A" engraved inside)
Lucas ripped his shirt open. His chest panel bore scratches over embedded microfilms: Ayla smashing Caged Moon in rain, clutching half-melted wolf during rebirth surgery, his blurred charge to stop Odile's laser ring...
"Your heartbeat accelerated seventeen bpm." He clutched his leaking chest. "Same as when you watched me fix vents in the studio."
Emergency lights flared. All figurines vibrated, playing childhood dialogues she shouldn't remember:
"What if Mom becomes a monster?" "Then I'll become a bigger one to eat her." "Liar, you won't even steal my licorice." "...I'll eat myself first."
Gears ground in the wall's depths. Ayla turned to see her mother's hologram melting—the missing ring finger now pierced by Lucas' mechanical eye.