Chap­ter 250 begins with Saint step­ping into a heavy still­ness, where the air is thick with a strong chem­i­cal odor that imme­di­ate­ly makes her cov­er her mouth. Her eyes strain to adjust to the dim light, grad­u­al­ly reveal­ing the space as some kind of makeshift dark­room. Faint out­lines of met­al lock­ers and old steel tables begin to take shape, their cold sur­faces reflect­ing bare­ly enough light to give away their form. A sink sits unused, its porce­lain sur­face dull beneath a faint glow. She scans the walls where papers flut­ter slight­ly, pinned in uneven rows, though their words remain unread­able in the shad­ow. There’s a dis­qui­et­ing sense that the space had once served a dif­fer­ent, more per­son­al purpose—one that now feels cor­rupt­ed by the eerie qui­et.

The sound of the storm out­side soft­ens, rain eas­ing into a light pat­ter as Saint calls for Patch, her voice restrained but urgent. With each step, her gaze jumps from object to object—plastic trays, metal­lic tools, and dark­room sup­plies labeled with names like Rapid Fix­er and Vario Fix Pow­der, each car­ry­ing its own qui­et men­ace. The famil­iar­i­ty of the labels both com­forts and unset­tles her, remind­ing her of long-for­got­ten cor­ners of her own past. Mov­ing deep­er into the barn, she notices some­thing strange at the far end—a struc­ture that doesn’t quite match the rest. A false wall juts out ever so slight­ly, and she inch­es clos­er, her breath shal­low. Her hand, though trem­bling slight­ly, push­es gen­tly on the edge of the pan­el.

At that moment, the storm ful­ly sub­sides, and the qui­et feels sharp­er than the thun­der that had pre­ced­ed it. The barn’s door swings ajar, flood­ing the room with light that lands direct­ly on the hid­den area she’s just uncov­ered. What she sees brings her to a stand­still: a pho­to­graph, old but chill­ing­ly vivid, tacked onto the wood­en beam behind the false wall. It’s her. A teenage Saint, wide-eyed and afraid, tears glis­ten­ing on her cheeks, and no glass­es on her face. The raw emo­tion cap­tured in that pho­to stabs through her with mer­ci­less pre­ci­sion, drag­ging her mind back to a time she’d long tried to bury.

The shock pro­pels her back­ward as her hand instinc­tive­ly reach­es for her gun. She doesn’t raise it, not yet—just holds it, as though anchor­ing her­self to some­thing real. Her breath catch­es in her throat, and she feels the scream rise, only to force it back down with a clenched jaw. That sin­gle image—of her younger self star­ing help­less­ly at the lens—summons mem­o­ries she had not mere­ly for­got­ten, but forcibly erased. Her sur­round­ings dis­ap­pear in that instant; she is no longer in the barn but pulled back into that vul­ner­a­ble ver­sion of her­self. The pho­to­graph isn’t just documentation—it’s proof that some­one had been watch­ing, pre­serv­ing her fear like a tro­phy.

Each detail in the room seems to scream with new mean­ing. The labels, the trays, even the papers she couldn’t read before now feel like frag­ments of someone’s twist­ed gallery, per­haps doc­u­ment­ing not just her, but oth­ers. This space, far from just being a stor­age room or work area, was a sanc­tu­ary for some­thing dark. Saint’s heart pounds, the pho­to­graph now burned into her mind as a sym­bol of every­thing she had hoped to out­run. A lifetime’s worth of trau­ma had nev­er tru­ly left; it had been wait­ing for her here, tucked behind a wall, untouched but far from for­got­ten.

She tight­ens her grip on the weapon, steady­ing her­self. Her focus narrows—not out of fear, but clar­i­ty. The past is no longer hid­ing, and nei­ther is she. This con­fronta­tion is no longer just about memory—it’s about jus­tice. She whis­pers Patch’s name again, soft­er this time, but with pur­pose. If he’s here, he deserves to know. If he’s in dan­ger, she needs to find him. The silence that fol­lows her call lingers longer than it should.

Out­side, the sun­light stretch­es fur­ther across the floor as the day final­ly claims the sky. The con­trast between light and shad­ow in the room mir­rors the clash between what Saint remem­bers and what she now must face. Some­where in that room, buried with­in the sym­bols and silence, lies a truth wait­ing to be unearthed. And she will no longer run from it.