"If something happened to you today - if everything you were, everything you remember, everything you are capable of - was to be removed save for your name and your instincts, what would that make you? If every instinct asked you to be monstrous, every reflex whispering for very...direct solutions. If you began to remember, and things came to you in fractions, and all of it amounted to the truth, and there was no way to lie to yourself anymore."

She exhales slowly, finger tapping on the cup.

"If everything that amounted to a mask was torn from your soul, and you witnessed something unspeakable in its depths - wouldn't you then know that you needed to exercise caution?"