Daniel takes a bus from Paseo de Colón to the Montjuïc cemetery for Nuria Monfort’s burial. He walks through the vast, bleak necropolis, passing near his mother’s grave and feeling the place’s cold silence and anger.

At the graveside, Daniel watches the priest’s rite over a simple pine coffin guarded by gravediggers. He notes who is present and absent: Isaac, the keeper of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and Nuria’s father, does not attend. Daniel recognizes a neighbor and her husband, sees an unfamiliar woman in gray with flowers, and spots Enrique Palacios—the policeman who recently saved Daniel’s life—standing apart.

Overcome, Daniel cries; the woman in gray quietly offers him a flower. Daniel stays until the mourners disperse, then leaves without managing a proper farewell.

Near the cemetery gates at dusk, Daniel expects to be stranded, but Palacios waits in a black car and insists on driving him back. In the car, Palacios expresses regret about Nuria’s death and urges Daniel to drop the entire matter and forget Carax, warning that it has gone too far.

Daniel rejects Palacios’s concern and orders him to stop, calling the car and Palacios “death.” After Daniel gets out, Palacios reveals that Nuria died in his arms and that her last words seemed like a message: “There are worse prisons than words,” and a request to “let her go,” referring to someone named Penélope. Later, sitting by the port where Daniel once met Laín Coubert, Daniel realizes the message was not for him but for Julián Carax, the man Nuria loved in silence for twenty years.