Chap­ter III takes place in the coastal town of Fécamp, France, on a qui­et yet pro­found day, July 29, 1778, where Addie is swept away by the sheer mag­ni­tude of the sea before her. Unlike any­thing she has ever encoun­tered through books or maps, the vast­ness of the ocean stretch­es infi­nite­ly into the hori­zon, spark­ing a sense of awe and won­der in her. The sea rep­re­sents a world far beyond the small vil­lage where she was raised, and its bound­less expanse intro­duces a new depth to her exis­tence that she had nev­er before con­sid­ered. As she spends her days by the pier, watch­ing the tides and lost in her own thoughts, the dis­tant ten­sions of Paris seem to fade into obliv­ion. The unrest caused by food short­ages and the dis­con­tent that brews in the heart of the city feel like anoth­er world alto­geth­er, yet Addie finds her­self torn between the desire to escape to the unknown and an inex­plic­a­ble hes­i­ta­tion that keeps her root­ed in place.

One stormy after­noon, while Addie is read­ing Shakespeare’s The Tem­pest on the beach, a fig­ure from her past emerges—Luc, the enig­mat­ic man whose pres­ence both unset­tles and cap­ti­vates her. Their his­to­ry, filled with moments of both ten­sion and reluc­tant truce, makes his sud­den appear­ance all the more haunt­ing. Luc’s allure is mag­net­ic, yet his sin­is­ter nature lingers in the back of Addie’s mind, height­en­ing the dis­com­fort she feels in his com­pa­ny. He casu­al­ly hints at his influ­ence on the course of his­to­ry, even sug­gest­ing a con­nec­tion to Shake­speare himself—a claim that Addie finds hard to believe, yet can­not entire­ly dis­miss. As the storm inten­si­fies, Luc invites Addie to seek shel­ter, lead­ing her to a church, a loca­tion that seems out of place giv­en his dev­il­ish aura. Inside the church, the con­trast between the sanc­ti­ty of the space and the chaot­ic storm out­side under­scores the ten­sion between the divine and the forces that seem to manip­u­late real­i­ty in ways beyond Addie’s under­stand­ing.

In the still­ness of the church, Addie and Luc engage in a con­ver­sa­tion that touch­es on themes of belief, faith, and the nature of exis­tence. Addie, a skep­tic at heart, shares her dis­con­nec­tion from faith, unable to con­nect with the divine or believe in God in any mean­ing­ful way, while find­ing her­self con­tin­u­ous­ly con­front­ed by Luc, a fig­ure who seems to pos­sess pow­ers beyond expla­na­tion. Luc provoca­tive­ly asserts that divin­i­ty is a mat­ter of per­spec­tive, using his manip­u­la­tion of real­i­ty as evi­dence of his god-like abil­i­ties. As their dia­logue delves deep­er, the dis­cus­sion shifts to the nature of souls, with Luc pre­sent­ing a dis­turb­ing per­spec­tive on their worth and how they are treat­ed, using a glow­ing mar­ble as a metaphor to illus­trate his point. This unset­tling con­ver­sa­tion forces Addie to reflect on her own sense of free­dom, the lim­its of her pow­er, and the unseen forces that gov­ern her life.

The exchange between Addie and Luc in the church encap­su­lates the com­plex­i­ty of their rela­tion­ship, a dance of pow­er, skep­ti­cism, and explo­ration of the human expe­ri­ence. Their dia­logue speaks to the broad­er themes of free­dom and con­trol, rais­ing ques­tions about the nature of belief, the fragili­ty of human under­stand­ing, and the fine line between the divine and the dia­bol­i­cal. Through their inter­ac­tion, Addie is left ques­tion­ing not just the real­i­ty of her exis­tence, but the very forces that shape it—forces she is begin­ning to real­ize may be beyond her com­pre­hen­sion. As she lis­tens to Luc’s provo­ca­tions, she becomes increas­ing­ly aware of her own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in a world where the bound­aries between the human and the divine are no longer clear­ly defined. The storm out­side rages on, a fit­ting back­drop for the tur­bu­lence she feels inside, as she stands at the cross­roads of under­stand­ing and uncer­tain­ty.