In the Exchange’s grove, Livira reflects on how the Mechanism and the place itself may shape perceptions. She proposes experimenting with a portal not aligned with those linking her home and Evar’s. Recounting her route back, she describes the Raven guiding her through forbidden chambers: a sea of loose books (94), rust-choked iron stacks (67), and a ruin of book-dust and collapsed shelving (46), all while barefoot and scolded.

Reaching Chamber 7, Livira finds the grey assistant still half-in the portal that barred her years before. She rigs a rope and a blanket weighted with books as a counterweight, hauls the assistant clear, and the portal opens, confirming the seal depended on the assistant’s touch. Livira re-enters the grove.

She and Evar step through a neighboring, off-line portal. Livira is seared by unbreathable air and staggers back, while Evar, a ghost there, passes unharmed through a white door into a mountain temple beneath a green sky and among shaggy, claw-armed creatures. Comparing experiences, they hypothesize that columns change worlds and rows change time; entering one’s past renders a person a ghost. They weigh knowledge versus ignorance and decide to test further, aiming near Evar’s brother Mayland in time.

Before they can act, the grove shudders as if struck by immense blows; portal lights ripple and black smoke boils from distant pools. At Evar’s request, Livira hands him the brass claw. He tears down a branch, fashions a spear, and confronts jet-black “Escapes” spilling from corrupted pools. Evar kills a charging humanoid and a many-legged serpent with swift, practiced moves taught by Clovis.

More Escapes converge. Evar urges Livira to flee, but a new attacker smashes into them. His spear shatters; momentum carries both through a portal, and they fall, eventually spilling out between towering shelves in a library aisle, their experiment turned into a fight for survival.