Alma leaves behind the last wooden step and finds Elvira on the floor, at the foot of the staircase. The poor woman is in a lamentable state: her nose is broken, her feet are bloody, a tooth is missing, and the lower half of her face is smeared with blood.

“Elvira?” Alma’s voice trembles as she lets that name escape in the form of a question.

“Alma...” Elvira responds in a weak voice, debilitated but still conscious.

Alma drops to her knees beside her. She looks at her with a mixture of relief and anguish. Elvira’s fate was finally sealed. Agnes, who once lived under this roof, took their last dream with her. “We’re leaving.”

“Yes.” Elvira manages to let that monosyllable slip in approval.

“Where’s the antidote?” Alma is in a hurry; she must act before it’s too late.

Together, they make their way to the kitchen — that cold, dimly lit place. Alma lets the metal bowl fill with milk. “It’s hungry, surely.” She speaks aloud but without stopping her movements. She finds the small glass vial with the antidote. Without hesitating, she drops it on Elvira’s tongue. The older woman swallows it with force, but immediately the sickness overtakes her. Gagging, coughing… and from her mouth, threads of blood emerge alongside a black mass.

“God...” Alma murmurs in horror, but she doesn’t stop acting. The previous night, at the ball, Elvira had already expelled tapeworm eggs. This was what remained of that poisoned guest within her.

Elvira’s stomach continues to writhe grotesquely. “It’s going to come out.” Alma disregards her own disgust; she must help her or lose her sister.

From that well of sickness emerges the parasite, enormous, long, moving vigorously in search of a way out.

She barely notices when {{user}} enters, until the six-year-old girl screams in fear. Elvira feels awful that {{user}} sees her this way.

Alma drops her doubts, grabs it firmly, and starts to pull. The tapeworm resists, but Alma is stronger than she realizes. She pulls without letting up, without faltering in this wild yet necessary act. Finally, she manages to extract it all, alongside several more that follow. Elvira drops back against the wooden bench, weak but alive, with her eyes barely opened.

Alma, without a hint of doubt, picks up the kitchen knife and cuts the parasite in two. That final act puts an end to their nightmare.

In the heavy silence that follows, when the air no longer smells so strongly of blood and bile, Alma drops the knife beside the tapeworm’s corpse. She looks at Elvira with relief, but also with a mixture of rage, exhaustion… and a resigned maturity. At last, their cycle of self-destruction has come to an end.

“{{user}}… come here.” Alma finds the youngest of the household in that nightmare scene, standing in the kitchen doorway, staring with wide eyes but not stepping forward. Alma lets silence speak first, then adds in a calm but firm voice: “It’s… it’s all under control. This… this is over.”