Starval surprises Evar building a ramp of books toward the chamber’s distant ceiling. Evar hides his true motive—recovering a torn, vital memory of a girl he believes needs him—while Starval warns the stack will collapse and departs for his turn in the Mechanism. Evar reflects on their prison’s scale, the four sealed doors, and his long-failed attempts to find a way out.

Crossing the chamber, Evar contemplates the Mechanism’s lure: it renders books as lived worlds but has occasionally kept children. Though all five lost children were later returned unchanged, Evar alone refuses to re-enter. He imagines Starval honing lethal arts inside and fears the effect on valuing real lives.

Back at their settlement of book piles, Clovis storms in and batters Evar under the pretense of training. Kerrol intervenes verbally, warning that the current Escape is large and sly. Clovis leaves to hunt; Evar, worried for her despite Kerrol’s caution, follows her faint trail through sooty dust.

Tracking her, Evar recalls each sibling’s specialization—Clovis the fighter, Starval the assassin, Kerrol the psychologist, Mayland the historian—and his own lack of a gift. He remembers past, desperate escape schemes (even blood-circles on the doors) and his growing dread of dying caged here. Mayland’s presumed death, with suspicions dividing the siblings, sharpens his urgency.

Deep among towering stacks, the air feels altered and brittle. Evar realizes he is being hunted. Blackness slips from stack to stack: an Escape feeding on old ideas. Fear overwhelms him; the hunter becomes prey. He runs through the maze of books as the entity gains on him.