Approaching Kalyke, Lysander and Diomedes receive a shrouded hail from Consul Helios. After exchanging verification codes, Helios reports from behind enemy lines: Ascomanni craft are numerous, and the Volk field heavy patrol craft, Republic code-breaking tech, and frontline dreadnaughts. He confirms Sungrave is besieged but holding, as is Demeter’s Garter under Vela, and orders the fleets to contract into Kalyke’s shadow to begin a ghost sail toward Io.

Helios’s torchShip docks. He arrives on the Dustmaker weary and wounded, bearing captured weapons, including Ascomanni blackspår spears made of oxinium alloy. Diomedes formally relinquishes imperium; codes are entered, and Helios dons the Cestus, invoking ancestral words as the crew salutes. Lysander, meanwhile, notices a kitari with House Dionysus grapes on the pommel—his daughter’s weapon previously displayed in Helios’s office—and recalls Helios’s momentary hesitation during the Cestus’s DNA sampling.

Sensing something wrong, Diomedes keeps Zagria and her Dustwalkers inside the shrouded command triangle and poses an additional code phrase. The supposed Helios answers correctly, seeming to allay concern. Diomedes then strikes fast, seizing the Cestus arm and yanking up the sleeve.

The arm shows a stark line where skin tone and musculature change, revealing a grafted limb and a false identity. Zagria and the Dustwalkers draw their blades as the realization lands: the man in control of the Dustmaker is not Helios au Lux, exposing a dire infiltration on the eve of their strike on Io.