On the abandoned Sons of Ares base within Marcher-1632, Darrow describes the grinding isolation, privation, and creeping dread among the roughly two hundred survivors. He checks progress with Harnassus, who reports the Archimedes’s hull and reactor work nearing completion, contingent on Cassius and Aurae returning with helium. Harnassus voices suspicion that Aurae may be Krypteia despite her skills and songs; Darrow counters that if she were, they would already be dead.

Lonely, Darrow visits Screwface in the coms chamber. He recounts Screwface’s covert past and grievous injuries, then endures the Howler’s bitterness about Cassius, Sevro, and the abandoned Free Legions. Screwface fears Rim stalkers and Atlas and notes Ajax once passed nearby; he also distrusts Aurae. Darrow urges him to stop spreading pessimism, reminding him the men look to him for tone, but leaves without changing Screwface’s outlook.

Seeking discipline over despair, Darrow trains alone in the Archimedes’s sparring sphere, fighting through variable gravity while nursing injuries from Lysander. To break the silence, he scans pages of Aurae’s book and has the computer narrate them in Virginia’s voice. The text’s “understandings”—opaque yet familiar—accompany the Willow Way forms and briefly quiet his mind.

Afterward, Darrow performs sparse ablutions, then records messages to Virginia and to Pax, continuing the story of his life for his absent son. Reflecting on the book’s idea of useful emptiness, he is interrupted by the base’s alarm: sensors detect an inbound Votum torchShip. Feeling a guilty surge of purpose, Darrow suits up as Screwface calls battle stations.