Livira crashes to the ground after Clovis’s choking and crawls toward the unconscious Malar. Clovis tests Yute with a lightning-fast cut, and his blood proves he is alive. Evar lifts Livira away from Clovis and helps his dark-maned brother—felled earlier by Malar—back to his feet as more refugees spill from the portal.

Yute challenges Clovis’s account of a city seen nine hundred years before, asserting it was shared by both races. Livira recognizes Evar’s undisguised features and still sees his kindness. Lord Algar denounces the idea that sabbers shared books, while a flashback recounts their smoke-blind flight through Chambers 7 and 16, bringing soldiers and Crath’s elites—including Algar and Serra Leetar—into the forest.

Yute explains that a third race’s chemical attack shattered a rare peace. As assistants outside time, he and Yamala broke their vows, shedding immortality to act: Yamala keeping Irad’s creed of nothing hidden, Yute favoring knowledge earned through wisdom. Yute admits his hubris and reveals he was the boy Livira once saw at a window in the poisoned city.

Yamala’s amplified voice argues that advanced weapons could have enforced peace; Yute counters that faster killing would have deepened the massacre, a view Algar tacitly endorses as he vows genocidal revenge and blames Yute for Crath’s fall. Clovis nearly throws a knife at Algar, but Evar stops her. The siblings clash; Evar plants himself between Clovis and Livira and swears he will burn everything before letting Clovis harm her. The ground trembles and a crimson flame licks a nearby tree.

Livira’s scream interrupts the standoff: Malar is bleeding badly from the belly wound Clovis gave him. While fear spreads through the crowd and smoke taints the air, Livira begs for help as Malar’s life ebbs.