Evar climbs from a pool into a quiet grove, still stained by the slaughter he watched in the past. In this timeless place he is startled by a black‑robed girl with two‑tone hair who greets him as a friend: Livira, now older. Evar protests that he saw her only a day ago as a small child, revealing a mismatch in their timelines.

They test their surroundings and realize they are perceiving the same place differently. Evar sees drinkable pools and ordinary trees; Livira sees vertical doors of light and towering tapwoods with ravens. When Evar fills Livira’s empty water‑skin from a pool she cannot recognize as water, both accept that the realm shows each of them its own face.

Livira explains the difficulty of returning, involving a Raven, a found feather, and a grey room with a book; Evar identifies it as the Mechanism and cautions her about its dangers. He describes entering another pool and witnessing Clovis’s childhood and a sabber massacre he could not prevent, which convinces him that time is misaligned and he has been a ghost in the past.

They speak candidly about Clovis. Evar denies she is the author he seeks and portrays her as hardened by rage and dedicated to killing sabbers. Livira admits her own hatred of sabbers and warns they may soon besiege her city. Evar, moved by what he saw, resolves to fight them and to watch Clovis’s back.

Pressed by Livira, Evar outlines his origins: a trapped community, children lost to the Mechanism (Mayland, then Evar, then Kerrol, then Starval), the sabbers’ annihilation of the rest, and Clovis’s survival via the Mechanism. Years later, the Mechanism returned five children, raised by the Assistant and the Soldier. Carrying a clue‑giving book, Evar intends to seek its author, but Livira urges method over chance. They agree to understand the system of pools and doors before leaping again, reclining to study the layered sky.