Deaglán is overwhelmed when the white-robed druid proves to be his father, alive in body despite years of believed death. After their embrace, his father explains that Fadrique was not wrong: he really was hanged after the invasion. The Catenan Military later raised him with a Vitaerium, a powerful object that lends motion and warmth to his dead body but does not truly restore life.

As Deaglán struggles to accept this, his father confirms that Deaglán's mother and Ysa were not similarly revived. When Deaglán begins to speak about Cari's death, both men break down together, sharing grief that has been separate for years. Once they recover, Deaglán asks why the Hierarchy targeted Suus in the first place.

His father explains that years before the invasion, a Suusian ship found an unmapped island containing ruins, documents, and artifacts. After translation, those records revealed that Cataclysms are part of a recurring cycle caused by an ancient war and somehow linked to the Aurora Columnae. Deaglán's father secretly ordered research into a solution and into what the Hierarchy already knew, but his agents began vanishing, and one final message confirmed that the Princeps and some Dimidii were already aware of the threat. Three months later, the Hierarchy invaded Suus.

When Deaglán asks why his father did not simply reveal the truth, his father leads him to reason out the answer: the Republic would have discredited the evidence, seized it, or used the accusation as a pretext for conquest. Even if the danger were believed, the rulers of Caten would never willingly surrender Will and the power built on it. His father then adds that the recovered records also described a weapon capable of threatening even the Republic, which he believes was the main reason Suus was attacked and which Estevan later used at the naumachia.

Deaglán receives unexpected relief when his father firmly says he was right to stop Estevan, calling Estevan's actions monstrous. Pressed on whether he himself would have used the weapon, his father admits he would have used it against invaders and threatened the Republic, but he does not know whether he could have gone further. He ends by explaining that he kept the coming danger from Deaglán because Deaglán was only fourteen and he wanted to preserve a few last months of childhood; now that time is gone, he promises to tell Deaglán everything he knows.