An unnamed narrator wakes after sleeping in the hutch beside Slátra, still full of joy from the previous night. The narrator had watched Haedeon take his first flight on Allume and had shared a moonlit ride with him through the mountains, making the contrast with the present moment brutally sharp.

That happiness collapses when the narrator realizes Mah, Pah, and Haedeon have died while the narrator slept. Their bodies show clear signs of poisoning, and the narrator fixates on their painful final expressions, unable to accept that they are truly gone.

The narrator is overwhelmed by grief so heavy that moving feels impossible and unwanted. Outside, Allume, Náthae, and Akkeri circle and scream, seeming to sense the loss, but the narrator cannot yet face showing the dragons what has happened.

Mah and Pah’s aides urge the narrator to let the bodies go and return them to the elements. The narrator resists because releasing them would make the deaths final, and the narrator cannot bear the thought that this embrace and these words of love might be the last.

The aides also say the narrator must now wear Mah’s diadem, which only came free after draining Mah’s life. As the diadem fills the narrator’s mind with the Creators’ harsh, unfamiliar cries, the narrator remembers Mah saying she had never felt closer to death than when she first wore it. Crushed by loss, the narrator considers putting it on for that very reason: to be closer to death too.