After another failed day of alchemical trials, Saeris vents her rage behind the forge by hurling glassware against the rocks. Carrion finds her mid-destruction, needles her about her lack of progress, and Saeris admits the quicksilver will accept pure silver but “laughs” and burns up whenever she tries to add other materials.

Carrion focuses on what has been working: Saeris can change quicksilver’s state simply by telling it to. He suggests she try the same approach and ask the quicksilver to meld, an idea Saeris hates because it feels too simple—and because it came from Carrion. Still, Saeris decides there is a way to half-test the theory and brings Carrion to the map room where Danya’s shattered quicksilver sword remains embedded in the stone wall.

In the torchlit room, Saeris approaches the metal shards and hears the quicksilver “voices” more clearly than ever, escalating into a painful rush when she touches it. She steadies herself and begins a two-way mental conversation, learning the quicksilver rejects being “owned” and can be “everywhere.” When Saeris asks it to come out of the stone so the blade can be reforged, the quicksilver refuses at first, indifferent to Fae and human desires.

Saeris bargains, asking what it wants. The quicksilver demands music: a full song “from start to finish” that it can “keep,” in exchange for allowing itself to be reforged into an unmatched blade. When Saeris also asks for the blade’s old magics to return, the quicksilver resists, saying the “gift” was revoked and is “undeserved,” judging all warriors as killers.

Pressing carefully, Saeris argues that warriors can protect and defend, and asks how the quicksilver can know who deserves power. The quicksilver sets a condition: after Saeris fulfills the bargain—restoring the sword and providing a worthy song—it will “taste the blood” of the intended bearer and then decide whether to let the old magics flow again. Immediately, the embedded shards begin to tremble and pull free of the stone, dropping into Saeris’s palm and onto the floor as Carrion watches.

As Saeris and Carrion start collecting pieces, Lorreth unexpectedly speaks from the room and offers to help. Using his magic, Lorreth lifts hundreds of fragments at once, bundles them together, and deposits them into a ceramic pot for Saeris to carry. Thrilled by the breakthrough—and newly confident she can bargain with quicksilver for the shield-rings too—Saeris grins and tells Lorreth she was about to go looking for him.