From a dune overlooking Duat, Caeror quizzes Vis on the city’s layout, its tunnel access points, and the customs and language he has spent nearly two months learning. Vis reflects on the intensity of this preparation: he has studied maps, laws, dialect, and writing, while also trying to understand what being Synchronous allows him to do. He and Caeror have found that Vis can imbue objects in Obiteum, but he still cannot use Will in the same way as in Res, so they have shifted their attention to the one ability that clearly works: controlling iunctii.

While hidden in the sand, Vis maintains a link to Tash and follows the iunctus’s sight as Tash works in the garden. At Caeror’s prompting, Vis tests whether commands can survive after the imbuing ends by ordering Tash to hide legumes and later retrieve them. Their exchange also shows Vis’s growing skill and efficiency: using so much Will once left him gasping in the poisonous heat, but now he can endure it better. When they spot a mining column leaving Duat, they consider whether Vis could enter disguised as a iunctus, but Caeror explains that the entrances are tightly controlled; the river route is also rejected because the Infernis is lethally poisonous and protected by barriers.

As they continue watching Duat, Vis decides to tell Caeror about the naumachia and the trauma tied to it, though he simplifies parts of the story. Soon after, they notice an unscheduled patrol of three Gleaners, which Caeror takes as evidence that their allies are active. Vis suggests using the patrol patterns to create a diversion during his infiltration, but Caeror warns that repeated tests will alert Duat and force it to adapt. Caeror then responds to Vis’s confession with sympathy rather than pressure, telling him that fear will not stop him when the moment truly comes.

Their talk turns to mutalis and other desperate possibilities. Caeror confirms that mutalis might destroy Duat’s supposedly unbreakable material, but he rejects breaching the walls because it would bring immediate attack and might expose thousands of people inside the city to the poisoned air. He also says he has never heard of a blood-coated stylus that grants protection from mutalis, weakening Vis’s hope that such a tool exists. The conversation grows more personal as they speak about Lanistia, about Caeror’s pain at being the copy left in Obiteum, and about how Vis would know if one of his other selves died. By the time they return at dusk, the trust between them has deepened, and Vis feels more capable of what lies ahead.

Later, alone in the corridor, Vis goes back to the golden door and tries to force himself past the terror it stirs in him. He advances step by step, repeating to himself that he is here in Qabr, not back at the naumachia, and resolves to touch the mutalis and prove he can survive it. Before he does, Nofret interrupts him and warns that the door is cursed: opening it will unleash the end of all things. A young male relative drags her away before she can say more, leaving Vis alone again with the door and with a far more ominous understanding of what may lie beyond it.