Clovis drags Evar out of the Exchange into the pool room before their siblings, raging that he kissed a sabber. The Assistant dismisses Clovis’s fixation on “historical figures” and states the past cannot be changed. Discussion clarifies that leaving the Exchange to an earlier time renders visitors ghostlike there, but if enemies come to the library’s present they can be touched. The Assistant then erases the pool, vowing to reinstate it only when water is needed.

Clovis demands Evar be chained; Starval and Kerrol refuse. Clovis accuses Evar of betraying their dead and, in fury, punches him unconscious. When Evar wakes, he wanders off, nursing his injuries and confusion about Livira, yet resolves to face her again, speak plainly, and accept whatever judgement she gives.

Starval finds Evar and offers support, urging him to seize what joy he can. Evar recounts the massacres he witnessed: sabbers slaughtering Clovis’s family and the city’s people, and that in Livira’s time sabbers hold the library. Starval counters with his philosophy that only moments of meaning matter in a world where life is easily spent.

Kerrol reveals himself, eager to study real people beyond the Mechanism’s consequence-free days; Starval wants the Exchange’s “real” worlds where actions persist. Clovis arrives, recognizing the spot where Evar first found the book, and presses to return to the forest to make war. Evar refuses to unleash her, but all accept they need the Exchange and that their immediate barriers are the Soldier and the Assistant.