After triggering Sciona Freynan's final spell and watching the Magistry burn, Thomil and Carra grieve together on the rooftop. Carra urges Thomil to stop waiting to be caught, so they pack Sciona's notes and plan to dump the travel case in the West River, with a destructive conduit as backup if they are intercepted.

Before they can leave, Cleon Renthorn and Jerrin Mordra arrive. Thomil realizes Carra has hidden the spellograph, so he stalls while Renthorn reveals that he had suspected Sciona's plan and is delighted that the other highmages are dead, because their deaths leave him in control. When Renthorn demands the spellograph and threatens to torture Thomil with a slow siphoning spell, Carra attacks from above and drives the heavy spellograph through Renthorn's skull, killing him.

Carra wants to kill Jerrin Mordra as well, but Thomil tackles Mordra first and discovers that the younger highmage truly did not understand the full conspiracy. Instead of taking revenge, Thomil chooses to honor Sciona's belief that some good might still be possible. Thomil forces Mordra to swear by his god that he will remember this day and try to do something better with the power now left to him, then tells him to thank Sciona, not him.

Knowing they cannot hide in Tiran any longer, Thomil and Carra head west toward the expanding barrier and the mountains beyond it, hoping Sciona's theory is right that Blight will briefly fail outside the shifting boundary. Barrier guards stop them in an alley, and Thomil uses one of Sciona's voice-trained conduits to blow apart a guard's hand. Thomil is then overpowered and nearly beaten to death, but a group of Endrasta railway workers intervenes with hammers and pickaxes, rescues Thomil and Carra, and reveals that they too are fleeing the city.

As the barrier pushes west, more Kwen pour into the streets. Guards and police fire into the crowd, wounding one Endrasta mother, and Carra takes the woman's baby so the group can keep moving. Then the guns stop working because Sciona's spell has disrupted the Reserve, confirming for Thomil that everyone in Leon's Hall is dead. The fleeing Kwen cross the old boundary over a field of bones, pass through the newly expanded edge of the barrier, and find that there is freezing cold but no Blight. With the mountains and caves ahead, Thomil feels that he is finally running not just from death but toward a fragile future, and he silently salutes Sciona's final gift: hope.