Amid smoke and fire, Evar finally sees what he missed: the Assistant and the Soldier flanking him are not anonymous servants but the very guardians who raised him—Livira occupying the Assistant’s body and Malar the Soldier’s. With everyone trapped and the fire closing, Livira, distant and focused, seizes the Soldier’s sword, cuts her palm, draws a blood circle, and falls through. Evar, still ghostlike, cannot catch her but plunges in after.

Evar lands in the Exchange, now crowded and tense. Yute is ushering civilians and owl-helmed soldiers through a portal between times; Clovis watches, restraining her itch for violence; Yamala stands apart. Calling for Livira, Evar draws wary attention but remains intent on finding her.

Mayland steps from a portal behind Yamala and locks her in a chokehold. Shocked, Evar and Starval confront him; Starval’s knife touches Mayland’s throat, but Mayland coolly argues the library is the true enemy and that “sabber” means enemy. He recounts Yute and Yamala’s long service and divergent beliefs. Yute pleads; Mayland declares compromise a cancer and snaps Yamala’s neck. A guard fires, Starval kills him, portals blacken, and Escapes begin to clamber out.

As panic erupts, Evar fixes on the one constant—Livira—and his home pool, the last untainted portal. Sprinting across the grass, he knocks an Escape aside and dives into the water, driven by the realization he had left Livira to face peril before and refusing to do so again.