Darrow and Diomedes are locked in a stone cell to await the Daughters’ verdict and find Cassius already imprisoned, bruised from a failed attempt to retake his ship. Amid distant cheers, the three razormasters trade barbed banter. Diomedes bristles that Darrow spoke for him at trial; Darrow prays silently to Pax, clutching a key. The tension grows as they wonder at the delay.

Breaking the silence, Diomedes confesses how the Rim fleet fell: an “Helios” boarded, received the Cestus, and then used it against their own. Diomedes sensed something wrong—gait, weight—but doubted himself. He now believes the man was Atlas au Raa in disguise, that Atlas is the Allfather behind Fá, and that this is vengeance on the Rim. Darrow connects the pattern: Atlas is operating from Ilium.

Darrow hammers on the door, warning Athena through the walls that Fá will not let her live. He argues Atlas’s plan has inertia and anticipates the Republic’s loss, shifting blame for atrocities onto Atalantia and the Republic to prepare a savior’s arrival—Lysander, the “Light Bringer.” Cassius rejects the idea, insisting Lysander’s conscience would not abide such cruelty.

Diomedes sides with Cassius on Lysander’s character and reveals a crucial fact: Lysander was not with his fleet but on the Dustmaker’s bridge when the ambush hit. Blinded and paralyzed by Atlas’s device, Diomedes felt an unarmored, strong figure—likely Lysander—drag him to a lifepod before being pulled away. Diomedes reasons Lysander’s toxin leech countered the paralytic, enabling the rescue. Believing Lysander likely died saving him, Diomedes mourns his light; Cassius, shaken by grief and relief, falls silent as Darrow withholds further argument.