After hiding in the greenhouse until full daylight, Oraya leaves her shelter and finds the Moon Palace transformed again. The building’s layout no longer matches what she saw during the night, reinforcing the Palace’s supernatural instability and the impossibility of escape under Nyaxia’s oath. Moving carefully through the silent halls, Oraya notices barred rooms, old and fresh bloodstains, and the aftermath of the previous night’s slaughter.

On the third floor, Oraya follows the smell of death to a balcony scattered with human corpses and finds Ilana among them. Ilana has been so brutally mutilated that Oraya barely recognizes her, and the sight forces Oraya to confront how completely human life is devalued in the vampire world. Oraya remembers first meeting Ilana years earlier outside one of Vincent’s parties, when Ilana’s fearlessness and vivid humanity became a rare source of companionship and rebellion for her.

That memory makes Ilana’s death more devastating, because Ilana had represented the possibility of a different human life. Oraya realizes that hope was fragile and false in a world where humans are treated like prey, and she bitterly reflects that the Kejari began only hours too early for Ilana to survive. While grieving beside the body, Oraya hears a small sound and discovers a sleeping Rishan vampire nearby, still smeared with blood after feeding.

Because the vampire is bloated and careless from overeating, Oraya is able to approach unnoticed and drive her dagger into his heart. She deliberately watches him wake just in time to understand that he is dying, taking satisfaction in giving him a fearful death and marking him with Ilana’s blood. The killing does not ease Oraya’s grief, but it gives her a brief act of vengeance against the cruelty that destroyed Ilana.

Afterward, Oraya searches Ilana’s pockets and takes two personal items: a familiar purple silk scarf and Ilana’s box of matches. Wanting to give her friend something better than the fate the vampires left her, Oraya burns Ilana’s dry body on the balcony. She returns to the greenhouse and watches the fire glow through the palace doors, mourning as the flames consume the last remains of the only human life that had made her imagine a different future.