On New Year’s Eve 1937 at AllSuch, Franz and Lena host a small dinner that doubles as Rune’s birthday remembrance. Digby, restored enough to rejoin their lives after weeks at the guest cottage, has been learning estate work with Franz and Cromwell while sketching daily to retrain his hands. Unsure of his future once leave ends, he agrees to stay through Rune’s birthday.

Urged by friends and loosened by wine, Digby recalls Rune’s brilliance and reveals the shield-shaped scar on his chest, saying, "He died singing." The table falls into reverent silence before toasts resume, their mood shifting from grief to a luminous camaraderie. The gathering becomes a crucible for decisions that alcohol and affection hasten.

Talk turns to land and opportunity. Sanjay raises the impending sale of Müller’s Madness, a remote, underdeveloped estate. In a barely remembered flurry, the planters form a consortium and charge Digby and Cromwell to visit the property and meet its seller. The mandate implicitly offers Digby a path: if the deal makes sense, he could run the estate with Cromwell managing and earn a stake.

Two days later they drive into the Western Ghats, suffer early engine trouble that Cromwell fixes by stripping the carburetor, then camp by a stream. Climbing toward the misty heights, they recall the estate’s history of poor access and falling prices. As they hike after a flat tire, Digby confronts his loss of surgery, finds general practice unappealing, and senses these mountains might let him start over. He resolves that if Müller accepts the offer, he will read it as a sign to become a planter, letting the permanence of rock and valley dwarf his shame into a fleeting blue flame.