Evar lunges for Livira as she falls back into her pool, still entangled with an Escape. More Escapes erupt from corrupted pools, forcing Evar to fight while keeping trees between himself and the attackers. Buoyed by recent hard-won lessons, he kills one with Livira’s brass claw but soon faces a tightening circle of foes around the now-dry basin. Remembering Livira’s warning that he is a ghost in her world, he realizes he cannot rescue her there.

Evar breaks through the ring and dives into a new pool, arriving in a different library chamber where an immaculate version of the assistant is silently drawing dry books from the water and stacking them along a mile-long strip. He discovers he can pass through shelves without resistance and deduces that the assistant is effectively moving the portal by extending the stacks. When he asks for a way out, the assistant wordlessly points toward a distant wall.

Fearing the utter blackness beyond the wall yet trusting the cue, Evar pushes through and crosses multiple connecting voids, scratching a rough map onto his jerkin with the brass claw. After fifteen chambers and a final, longer crossing he feared would trap him in darkness forever, he emerges into night air on the side of a mountain, experiencing wind and stars for the first time. A gust tears away the parchment scrap he kept from Livira, deepening his sense of loss.

From the heights he studies patterns of lights below: a city’s grid glows in the valley while countless campfires encircle it beyond. Even with limited martial insight, Evar recognizes an impending assault by a vastly superior force, setting a grim new horizon beyond the Exchange.