Yamala leads a mixed band of evacuees down into the library, cutting her palm to summon an assistant. The white-robed figure offers protection and guidance. As they move off, Arpix and Lastri reveal that Yamala earlier used blood to open a lighted passage to reach Yute’s door—proof of powers beyond standard librarian methods.

Clanking footsteps announce a threat: the jet-black, corrupted assistant from Chamber Seven. It seizes and kills a bookbinder. Yamala’s summoned assistant confronts it; the black assistant produces a shadowy sword and wounds the white one, but they grapple and go still. Corruption spreads through the wound until both, and the sword, turn inert grey. Yute identifies the wound as the vector; Livira notes Escapes cannot power both at once. Yamala explains only pure assistants open doors, and the sabbers must have opened Chamber Seven, releasing the rogue.

With no clear destination, Yute chooses the labyrinth in Chamber 2, trusting doors will not be a problem. Forty-six survivors settle uneasily among fiction stacks; food carried from the city has disintegrated, likely by the assistant’s cleansing. Questions mount without good answers as children roam and Master Jost tries to curb them.

Seizing the pause, Livira retrieves pages of her secret, scattered manuscript hidden across the labyrinth, binding them into an empty cover. She reflects that the library predates and surpasses human claims, and that sabbers once filled its chambers with learning; she resolves to endure whatever new order comes.

Distant cracks echo—gunfire. Malar judges them chemical ’sticks, not the Guard’s air-powered weapons. John Norris confirms, explaining their greater noise and danger. Livira climbs to watch the chamber’s distant wall and learns the Guard avoid such weapons for fire risk. A first coil of smoke rises above the stacks, warning that the fight is drawing near.