Before dawn, Meryn wakes after a restless night and rouses Alessandra. Outside their tent, hundreds of recruits—perhaps as many as a thousand—gather in the clearing at the base of Mount Wolfsbane. The Bonded recruits are visibly better equipped, with thick furs, crampons, pickaxes, and coils of rope, while commoners shiver in flimsy clothing. Meryn, benefiting from the gear Lee helped her acquire, straps on her crampons early.

A horn sounds and two Bonded riders appear on direwolves: Stark Therion, Alpha of the Daemos pack, and Beta Egith. Stark announces the rules of the Bonding Trials with open disdain for the commoners. Roughly a hundred direwolves await at the peak to choose from the first arrivals, and he encourages recruits to do whatever it takes to reach the top first. He warns that anyone who refuses the Ascent will be hunted down by the riders and their wolves. Egith gives the order and chaos erupts—Bonded recruits sprint for the steep direct route while commoners fight over leftover gear at supply tables, with screams suggesting violence has already begun.

Alessandra panics and tells Meryn she cannot put her life in anyone else's hands, then vanishes into the crowd before Meryn can convince her to stay together. Meryn hangs back by a tree, planning to take the slower path, when she hears a woman being attacked. She finds Izabel, one of the Bonded twins, being strangled on the ground by a man named Jonah. Meryn kicks Jonah in the face with her crampon-fitted boot, gouging his cheek and ear, then takes him down and holds a dagger to his throat. Jonah flees, threatening revenge.

Izabel's twin sister Venna arrives and the two communicate through sign language, Venna explaining she is hard of hearing. Grateful for the rescue, the twins insist Meryn join them on the direct Ascent route, arguing there is safety in numbers and that even the slow path is dangerous. Meryn initially resists, wanting to stick to her plan, but when she notices Stark Therion watching her with a threatening glare from the mountain's base, she becomes certain he would hunt her down if she took the slow route. She agrees to go with the twins.

The three women begin the steep, brutal climb, scrambling over icy boulders and slabs of rock. When the path gives way to a sheer wall of stone and ice, Venna and Izabel produce harnesses, ropes, and pickaxes from their packs—including an extra harness for Meryn, who lacks climbing gear beyond rope. They plan to share the pickaxes, with Venna free-climbing first. Just as they prepare to ascend, a body plummets from above and crashes near them, splattering them with blood. Meryn recognizes the corpse as the young beardless boy from the campfire the night before. Izabel grimly notes that falling bodies are the hardest part of the climb.