Darrow wakes in a cold, low-gravity cell, chained and disoriented, to find Athena reading his copy of The Path to the Vale. She says Sevro is safe and Lyria unharmed with Aurae, but warns that Darrow and the Raa will face judgment. Darrow quotes the book’s fourth understanding, claiming he believed he was among friends.

Athena explains the ships are real and that Aurae was sent only to find Sevro, but Darrow’s arrival forced a reckoning. Rejecting Society labels, she recounts her brutal upbringing as a gasfly over Jupiter and rejects being called Red. She reveals the chamber once housed Krypteia murders of Sons Darrow betrayed, and announces a public trial for him and the Raa.

Athena presents Pyrphoros, a Darkmetal hasta forged by Oskanda and inscribed with the Forbidden Song, saying it will be Darrow’s end if found guilty. She refuses to spend the stolen fleet on his war, declares the Republic lost and Mars doomed, and outlines her intent to let the Ascomanni purge the Golds before the Daughters seize power.

She confronts Darrow with a holocube documenting the vanished Sons of Ares he delivered to Romulus—interrogations and executions erased from public record but tattooed as names on her skin. She returns Pax’s key but demands he learn the dead’s names as reparation for his betrayals.

Left alone, Darrow rages at his choices, then watches the holos with sober clarity. He reflects that the victims had none of his advantages yet met death without recanting; most shouted his name, not Eo’s or Ares’s. The evidence forces Darrow to face the weight of his decisions and the abyss it opened in his family and cause.