Jonas turned from the window. “Amara.”

“No. He wants belief as if pain purchases it.” She kept her eyes on Elias. “It does not. Truth still needs shape. Evidence still needs chain. You do not get to come home from the impossible and ask us to stop asking the question that matters most: where did your certainty kill someone again?”

Elias stood so fast the room flashed white at the edges. Jonas caught his shoulder. This time Elias did not shake him off. He stayed there, bent a little under Jonas’s hand, breathing through the pain in his side until he could trust himself not to fall.

“I know what I sound like,” he said. “I know exactly what I am asking.” He looked at Amara. “So ask everything. Verify all of it. Tear the core apart. Track contamination. Date the pollen on the flowers if you want. But do not hide inside doubt because action is ugly.”

Amara’s face did not change, but her hand moved back to the drives. “I am already verifying.”