The world around them shifts around them even as Flins and Jing Yuan remain in place, following Madam Herta - or rather, the spirit's memory - through a sunlit past. After a circuitous tour through a city long-lost to ancient disaster, they once more return back where they started. The young woman does not seem to notice.
"Help me, please. I'm lost. Help me find my way home," she starts again, pleading Madam Herta once more like she'd never agreed to help at all. To her earlier question about whether this spirit may be preserved or trapped, Flins has his own hypothesis. But to prove it--
"Might you show me the direction you came from, young miss?" Flins steps into the sunlight to offer the very same help that had brought Madam Herta in a circle. The spirit brightens, and then points to her left where a pair of vegetable stalls stand at the entrance of a winding alleyway.
"This way... I think," she says, but the expression soon falls. "I don't remember the way back home though."
With a smile that appears as genuine as any gesture given to the living, Flins sets his hand over his heart. "Allow me to help."
The young woman thanks him profusely, and they start down the alley, just as Madam Herta had a moment ago. They walk the same twists, pass the same buildings, cross the same intersections, and return to the same place in the same marketplace at the end of it all. And just as before, the spirit begins to panic again.
"Help me, please. I'm lost. Help me find my way home," she begs. This time though, with lamp in hand, Flins walks past her to the bakery's entrance. He kneels and wipes his hand across a stone near the front door. It's not particularly dirty at a glance, but near-faded words etched into it begin to appear as if uncovered from beneath a mound of snow. A name, it appears to be, and a date. A simple memorial.
"Your home is here," he says softly.
"My home?" Suddenly the woman freezes, her eyes widening, gaze fixed on something far, far in the distance. She appears to be watching something, but the bakery before her shows no sign of life. Bit by bit, the sunlit plaza cools, the bakery's windows gain their dust, the walls warp, the door falls off its hinges, and the illusion bursts open to the frozen night.
"My... home..." the young woman murmurs and fades away.
Flins rises back to his feet to turn to his companions again, but before he can say anything, the groan of dozens of monsters too close for comfort cuts him off.
"It seems we can ill afford an opportunity to rest. Let us move, and pray that our allies have not succumbed to this disaster."