As Belikon bleeds from Kingfisher’s stab, Malcolm lunges for Kingfisher but is checked when Lorreth nicks him with Avisieth, making Malcolm recoil and smoke from the wound. Kingfisher orders everyone to run to the labyrinth as the amphitheater erupts into chaos. Saeris is freed in the confusion and immediately clashes with Captain Harron, who tries to intimidate her with talk of ancient games and Madra’s long designs.

Harron cracks Saeris across the face, but Widow’s Bane dulls the pain, letting Saeris stay focused. Saeris taunts Harron about Madra’s “gift” of eternity being slavery, then baits him into a reckless charge; Saeris takes him down, breaks his wrist control, and snaps his neck, killing him. As Madra charges toward Saeris in grief and rage, Saeris flees to the stairs where Lorreth calls for help and Kingfisher forces a path through feeders so Saeris, Kingfisher, Lorreth, and Carrion can escape into the labyrinth.

Inside the slick obsidian corridors, Kingfisher admits the walls shift and the route changes, and reveals his plan depends on Saeris: she must locate the quicksilver pool at the center. The group reaches an enclosure containing Morthil, a massive spider-demon with a Fae-like torso that tracks movement rather than sight or sound. Using Kingfisher’s instructions, they press against the perimeter and creep toward the correct exit that Saeris identifies by sensing quicksilver, but a shifting wall exposes them and triggers a frantic fight and sprint.

Morthil follows beyond its enclosure, forcing a brutal skirmish in the passageway; Saeris stabs its abdomen, Kingfisher severs legs with Solace, and Lorreth impales its mouth with Avisieth. Kingfisher warns it will “respawn” smaller and faster, so Saeris takes the lead, tracking quicksilver while Malcolm interferes by accelerating the moving walls to block them. Saeris keeps choosing new routes as the “thread” to quicksilver reforms, and the group finally crashes into the labyrinth’s center: dunes of countless tiny silver-looking coins.

Malcolm appears with Madra and a fully healed Belikon, and Belikon declares the three are a shared-source “Triumvirate” who must be killed together. Carrion steps up to defend Kingfisher and condemns Belikon for sacrificing Everlayne; then Carrion deliberately lets Malcolm bite him. Carrion reveals himself as Carrion Daianthus, and Malcolm violently reacts, convulsing and vomiting blood as if Daianthus blood is poisonous to him; amid the opening, Kingfisher realizes the coin dunes are an illusion and orders Saeris to find the one real coin with traces of quicksilver and end this.

Saeris runs alone as the walls stop moving, but the quicksilver’s whisper turns slippery and demands a “small favor” in exchange for guidance, which Saeris agrees to out of desperation to save Kingfisher. The whisper leads Saeris back to Morthil’s corpse and reveals the real coin is inside it; Saeris’s God Bindings flare as she acknowledges Kingfisher as her mate, then she reaches into the demon’s toothed throat and retrieves the gleaming coin. As the corpse twitches, Saeris panics—and Malcolm suddenly grabs Saeris’s wrist and demands the coin.