Nuria Monfort reflects that Sanmartí’s murder destroys her last illusion that Julián Carax is simply a wounded man trying to live. She realizes that “Laín Coubert” is still alive inside Julián’s burned body, and that Julián has been slipping out through a courtyard window, wandering Barcelona, and returning to the Aldaya mansion. In the crypt, he has broken tombstones and pulled out the coffins of Penélope and their son, a desecration Nuria reads as tragic rather than monstrous.

The police detain Nuria and interrogate her about Sanmartí’s death. After hours of waiting, Inspector Fumero arrives, threatens her, and assaults her, promising to kill her and Julián and to tell Julián that Penélope was his sister. Nuria defies Fumero, and the police keep her confined for more hours before releasing her into the rainy night.

When Nuria returns home, she finds her apartment ransacked by Fumero’s men: her belongings destroyed, Miquel’s books ruined, and a degrading message left on the wall. Terrified of being followed, she flees to the Ronda de San Antonio apartment where she has been hiding Julián, but it is empty. She waits until dawn and accepts that Julián will not return there and that she has lost him again.

Two months later, Nuria recognizes Julián beside her in a cinema. In whispers, he all but dismisses Sanmartí’s death and reveals a new obsession: there is still one surviving copy of The Shadow of the Wind in Barcelona. He explains that rumors in the rare-book world led him to a boy who found the novel, refused to sell it, and guarded it; that boy is Daniel Sempere.

Nuria fears Julián may harm Daniel, but Julián insists he only destroyed books taken from people who valued them as commodities, and that Daniel’s refusal to sell awakened sympathy and respect. Over months, Nuria meets Julián in shadows and learns he now lives in the ruined Aldaya mansion, watching over Penélope’s remains, unable to write and burning his new pages—some of which Nuria rescues and finds are about Daniel. Julián increasingly speaks of Daniel’s life (Clara, Fermín, Bea, and Daniel’s father) as if Daniel were the son he lost, and he stops hunting and burning his own work.

Nuria finally understands the danger: Fumero has been watching her for years and knows Daniel’s investigation will lead him to Julián. Expecting to be killed, Nuria resolves to give these pages to her father so they reach Daniel, asking Daniel to save himself, to look after Julián when she is gone, and to remember her so she is not erased.