Portia’s warriors prepare to infiltrate a halted ant column’s living fortress. Bianca has gathered Paussid beetles whose persistent “null” scent masks the wearer from ant perception. Bianca’s artisans kill the beetles, fashion chitin armor, and hand Portia sealed chemical packages timed to release a modified compound.

Despite fear and urgency, the team advances, briefly distracted by a blazing fireball streaking down—Portia takes it as a sign from the Messenger. The armored spiders climb into the ant-made citadel. The null scent keeps them unrecognized, but their bulk disturbs airflow and structure, raising a diffuse alarm. One infiltrator is exposed and torn apart.

Deep inside, Portia is finally detected; as ants smother her, her package detonates, saturating tunnels with acrid gas. She blacks out. Awakening amid a collapsed drift of living, aimless ants, she finds the fortress dissolved and most infiltrators dead or exhausted.

Bianca arrives with male assistants and domesticated ants, explaining that the gas blanketed the column in absence, unraveling the colony’s behavioral “web.” Her tame workers then seed new instructions by antennal contact, rapidly propagating purpose. The stunned invaders adopt the new program, becoming a tame army under Great Nest’s control.

Portia praises Bianca, who modestly credits the plan and notes the unexplained fireball. She urges Portia to shed the armor and investigate what has fallen from the sky.