Livira pursues a ragged raven that has stolen her painstaking maze map, suspecting it is a relic guide like the metal man. The bird brings her to the shelf where she tore the map’s page, demanding she replace it. When Livira complies, the raven pecks her robe, exposing the forgotten Dust-found scrap, then sets off again, implicitly requiring that to be returned as well.

Retracing her marked route out of the maze, Livira resumes leaving books as way markers. The raven disapproves but tolerates them. At a chamber door that will not yield to Livira’s touch, the raven’s beak opens the passage, leading her down a long corridor to a third vast room of taller black shelving and spines marked by dots and ridges rather than familiar scripts.

Deeper within, Livira confronts a sharp-edged wall of darkness. Trusting Meelan’s warning and the raven’s calls, she enters and gropes forward until she finds a small black book on the floor with a bumpy, unreadable title. Opening it plunges her into utter night; closing it restores light. Experimenting, she discovers the open book projects a moving dome of darkness several yards across.

Realizing the raven had earlier closed the book to clear her path, Livira pockets the intact volume, arguing that whole-book borrowing is acceptable, unlike torn pages. Armed with the darkness-book and her scrap, she resumes following the raven’s urgent lead deeper into the library.