Moving through Duat’s quieter, petal-covered streets after escaping the temple through the tunnels, Vis stays focused on survival. He judges that the alarm has not locked down the whole city, but that his freedom is now precarious because the Nomarch has seen his face. Even so, Vis reasons that the Nomarch is not truly human, cannot infer that Vis is Synchronous, and still needs Vis alive if Netiqret’s and Kiya’s false identities are to remain secure.

As Vis follows the river away from Ka’s pyramid, he is swept into a disturbance and discovers Ahmose standing above an angry crowd. A bystander explains that Ahmose was exposed as a Westerner by another returned Westerner and then openly admitted it. The crowd is enraged not only by the deception but by Ahmose’s blasphemy: he is shouting that Ka is not a god, that the people of Duat have been lied to, and that the demons with blades for hands are real.

Vis initially believes he may still be able to save Ahmose. Because only Overseers or priests can touch the dead, Vis expects the crowd to wait for official intervention, and he plans to command any arriving Overseers without revealing himself. But as Vis pushes closer, he hears Ahmose speak with desperate conviction about serving faithfully in the West, learning that Ka’s promised reward was really an endless nightmare, and trying to warn Duat before Ka can silence him.

When Ahmose notices Vis in the crowd, Ahmose becomes strangely calm. He says that Ka is coming for him and that he knows how to prevent Ka from taking what he knows. Vis realizes too late that Ahmose does not expect rescue; despite Vis’s whispered plea for him to stop, Ahmose smiles and throws himself backward into the Infernis.

The crowd celebrates Ahmose’s death as divine justice while Vis forces himself to the wall and confirms that Ahmose is gone. In shock, Vis stares toward the immense obsidian bridge Ahmose once called the true heart of Duat, and that detail sharpens into a possible plan. When a jubilant stranger grabs him to share in the celebration, Vis breaks the man’s wrist and disappears into the crowd, newly certain that he intends to kill Ka and that he may have found a way to do it—if he can first escape Duat.