Darlington chooses Aurelian as Alex Stern’s first field outing, explaining their history and word-magic specialty, while Dawes remains at Il Bastone. As they walk to Beinecke Library, he briefs Alex on Aurelian’s diminished power, their portable rites, and the need to manage Grays during a blood-based inspiration ritual. Inside, they meet Josh Zelinski (Aurelian president) and Amelia (the supervising Emperor), and prepare a protective circle with crematory-ash chalk, leaving controlled openings at the compass points.

Darlington drinks Hiram’s elixir to see through the Veil and directs Alex to test death words by dispersing a Gray identified as novelist Frederic Prokosch’s spirit. Alex succeeds, exhilarated by how easily death words work. The ritual begins: Zeb Yarrowman bares his arms, Aurelians cut his forearms, and his blood saturates a goatskin parchment. Chants in multiple languages crescendo as the blood transforms to ink that flows back into Zeb, blackening his skin and seeding inspiration.

As Grays gather, Alex enthusiastically drives them back but steps onto the southern markings, smudging the gate and breaking the circle. Grays surge through toward the unaware Aurelians. Darlington stalls them with rapid-fire death words and elegiac poetry, but a mass of Grays encircles the library from outside. Alex panics, saying simple death words and shaking; Darlington urges stronger words as the tide builds.

Alex begins singing a Ladino verse her grandmother used to say, and then shouts a proverb, “Quien no sabe de mar no sabe de mal,” which, combined with Darlington’s Virgilian invocation, manifests a vast wave that crashes over the Grays outside, scattering them. Darlington reseals and strengthens the markings, averting catastrophe, and the ritual completes with Zeb euphoric and writing, ink-stained and safe.

When Amelia and Zelinski confront them, Darlington deflects blame onto Aurelian, implying their rite nearly unleashed phantoms and threatening to report them to Dean Sandow; they hurriedly appease him. He pointedly tells Alex he did it for Lethe, not her. They clean the site and depart.

Back at Il Bastone, Darlington presses Alex about her failure. She reveals Grays actually grabbed her—something rare but possible—triggering her panic. The argument escalates as Alex accuses Lethe and Sandow of tracking her for years without giving her even simple tools like death words, leaving her to endure relentless hauntings alone. Darlington recognizes the truth of her accusation and, in an attempt at repair, offers her wine and literal permission to break the house’s abundant fine glassware to vent her anger.