Livira, merged with the Assistant, enters the Exchange and perceives the nexus as a single hub linking all shadows of the library. Noting Jaspeth’s dark veins through it, she uses one remaining faculty—communication—to order assistants to clear a chamber and block its corridors with books. As time and feeling erode, she clings to one task: a single book that should be burning but will not.

Livira returns to the firestormed stacks, finds the humans and Volente gone, and pushes through the inferno to a cinder mound where the Soldier has shielded her book. He argues it can burn only if its future burns with it. Contact with the book pulls Livira into her own story-world, where she and Evar are near-omniscient observers of a tower tale echoing Neera. Livira frames it as a lesson in tragic inevitability and purpose, urging Evar to save himself.

Back in the library, Livira writes a brief instruction in the book for Evar to find her in the Exchange and hands it to the Soldier. Compelled by another book, she pursues a cheap romance to a canith band escorting a terrified young woman, Carlotte. Their priest confesses their part in bringing fire only to seek knowledge against the skeer and begs salvation for her people.

Livira leads them to a corridor choked with book walls and a crawl tunnel into an emptied chamber housing a Mechanism—prepared by her earlier request. As the canith seal the tunnel, Livira proposes bringing water so they can grow food, arguing the rule’s intent with the Soldier. She quietly warns Carlotte not to fall; when Livira opens a portal to a forest pool in the Exchange, Carlotte leaps through and escapes.

Livira stabilizes the water flow to sustain the canith and plans for books to be delivered later. With the fire raging outside and their task set, Livira and the Soldier withdraw to wait within the Mechanism, trusting that Evar will follow her message to the Exchange.