Saeris reflects on how she once dreamed of entering the palace as Queen Madra’s favored maid, then later fantasized about getting close enough to assassinate Madra after her mother was killed. Instead, she finds herself in the palace as a prisoner: bruised, shackled, dehydrated, and left for hours in a stifling cell by Captain Harron.

At day’s end, Harron retrieves Saeris and questions where she learned to fight. While escorting her through the palace, he grudgingly gives her water when she nearly collapses. Saeris lashes out about the Third Ward’s conditions, describing meager rations and filthy runoff water that slowly poisons her people, arguing the “quarantine” is really a tool to contain dissent and crush rebellion. Harron refuses to engage, insisting he is not paid to ask questions.

Harron brings Saeris to a massive locked hall he says once served as a hall of mirrors. Inside, Saeris feels unnaturally drawn toward a raised platform with a long, narrow lever-like shape, and Harron warns her away and binds her wrists again. He lights torches that reveal carved stone faces of old gods, including Balea and Min, but the hall remains oppressively dark and eerily still.

Queen Madra appears seemingly out of the shadows, beautiful and youthful yet unsettling. She politely insults Saeris as a “low-born rat” and interrogates her about stealing crown property and killing two guardians, demanding the name of whoever trained her. Saeris claims she trained herself; Madra calls her a liar and abruptly suggests the Fae are behind the attack, accusing Saeris of being sent to kill her.

Madra rants about the Fae as monstrous Immortals she once banished and implies the hall’s unchanged state is what keeps them from returning. Declaring herself bored but wary, Madra orders Harron to “deal with” Saeris and then return to the Third Ward to root out the rest. When Saeris panics for her brother, Madra threatens to execute Saeris, kill everyone she cares about, and raze the Third—making an example so devastating that “a hundred thousand people” will pay the price for Saeris’s offense.