This interlude features a conversation between Ezra and Atlas, likely set before the main events of the story. Ezra delivers an extended monologue about the nature of wanting, starvation, and power, while Atlas mostly listens in silence.

Ezra begins by explaining that starvation is a learned skill—people can be taught to crave and can also learn to deny themselves. He argues that the real danger comes when someone who has learned to starve is finally given abundance: the body adjusts but the mind never forgets the deprivation. This creates a paradox where having turns into hoarding, and the hunger never truly ceases. He frames this as a fundamental flaw of mortality—one can learn to starve but never truly learn how to have.

Ezra then extends his metaphor to magic users, arguing that medeians suffer even more acutely because their bodies resist death and their capacity for wanting is magnified. He describes the process of gaining power as a kind of immunization—taking small, survivable doses of something that could otherwise be lethal. Those who succeed are the ones who learn to "starve correctly," managing their intake carefully rather than gorging and poisoning themselves.

When Atlas finally asks what it is that inevitably comes for everyone, Ezra answers simply: power. He describes it as something that accumulates a little at a time until it breaks a person, then closes his eyes in the sun with a smile.