In the night, Livira wakes convinced a pale boy in the ghosted Crath looked directly at her. She rushes to Arpix, arguing that she and Evar had been intangible “ghosts.” Arpix reminds her that Evar said assistants could see him and that children’s footprints led from assistant blood under their gaze. The puzzle remains unsolved, and Livira returns to bed.

At dawn, shaken by dreams and avoiding Deputy Synoth’s summons and the stolen book problem, Livira leaves the library. At the ruined wolf’s head gate, she exchanges somber reflections with guard Jash Shuh, then continues to Yute’s house. Salamonda feeds her while reporting a western sabber army and missing food she blames on a haunting. Yute returns from the walls, urges Salamonda to stay indoors, and it emerges he raised her mother from the streets.

Upstairs, Yute says the army is “too big.” Livira presses for truths before battle. Yute reveals a moonstone ring that projects pages of text onto the room, then explains the library as a compromise born of an old myth: knowledge versus wisdom, Irad versus Jaspeth, access tempered by difficulty so truth must be sought amid errors and changing tongues.

Livira cuts through the philosophy to ask why the head librarian looks like Yute. He says they share a common origin and queries Yamala’s condition, surprised she saw Livira at all. Confronted by looming war and tangled identities, Livira finally blurts, “I kissed a sabber,” and Yute dryly concedes that tops his surprises.