Veya slips back into one of Gore’s quieter wind tunnels and lowers herself into a rubbish chute, determined to recover the silver, gem-encrusted bangle she previously discarded. The descent is foul and dangerous, and when something drops down the chute above her, she lets go and lands in the trash below. In the glowing cavern at the bottom, Veya realizes the refuse has been sorted into neat piles, suggesting the creature living there is both intelligent and territorial.

As Veya moves toward a distant pile of glittering objects, she hears chewing and discovers the velvet trogg crouched on a nest of garbage, calmly eating pieces of broken furniture. Veya sees her missing bangle perched on the trogg’s head like a crown. Although terrified, Veya drags over a chair, sits in front of the creature, and directly asks for the bangle back, choosing negotiation over stealth because the trogg has already claimed the object.

The trogg toys with her, then explains that objects carry memories and that rich memories help her produce the glowing threads hanging through the cavern. She pulls one of those fluorescent strands from a hole in her palm, revealing that her web-like “palace” is made from secretions fed by memory. When the trogg says she has been saving Veya’s bangle for a special occasion because it will be “tasty,” Veya realizes she needs something more valuable to trade.

Veya offers a braided leather málmr set with black dragonscale, a keepsake she stole from her late father, King Ostern Vaegor, when she was seventeen. The trogg decides its memory is richer than the bangle’s and agrees to trade, also taking the bangle’s catch chain. After chewing the chain, the trogg hints that the bangle holds striking secrets connected to its use, but Veya refuses to hear them. The trogg promises not to eat those she bargains with, so Veya leaves safely with the bangle reclaimed, reflecting on the Mindweft who gave it to her and warned that it would serve her in two painful but necessary ways.