Before dawn, Thomil sits on the water tower above his building, where he usually goes to quiet himself. After his fight with Sciona Freynan and the revelation about Blight, Thomil realizes that his strongest feeling is not simple anger at Tiran but a sharper sense of betrayal. By tracing that feeling back, Thomil admits to himself that he had trusted Sciona and had even begun to care too much about her attention, which makes his shame and rage feel personal.

Thomil also reflects on how life in Tiran has changed him. He sees that he let a Tiranish woman alter something inside him, and he compares that surrender to the way Tiran slowly strips defiance from every Kwen. His thoughts turn to Maeva, Arras, and the destruction of the Caldonnae, and the memories that usually comfort him instead deepen his sense of loss.

Carra climbs up to find him, notices immediately that something is wrong, and tries awkwardly to comfort him. Thomil, unusually open, tells Carra that he loves her and admits that he broke his own rule about never trusting a Tiranish person. When Carra connects his pain to the highmage he works for, Thomil says the problem is larger than Sciona alone and tells Carra that everything they lost is bound up with Blight.

Thomil then explains everything he learned in Sciona's lab about the true nature of Blight and Tiran's magic. As he speaks, Thomil recognizes another painful truth: he is telling Carra not only because she deserves to know, but because he is too selfish to carry the knowledge alone. He sees that he has raised Carra as fiercely Caldonn partly to preserve his people and partly because he could not bear to be the last survivor by himself, and he fears that he has passed his pain into her as much as his heritage.

When morning comes and the factories begin siphoning power, Carra says almost nothing. Instead, she stands at the edge of the roof and screams her rage at the textile factory, but the machinery and magic drown out her voice. Watching her fury vanish into Tiran's noise, Thomil prays to his silent gods and concludes that this is the real death of the Caldonnae: not only that most of them are gone, but that the last survivors are being twisted by unbearable grief in a city that consumes everything.