Muttations that resemble giant wolves suddenly appear, and Katniss immediately recognizes them as engineered Capitol creatures. Cato runs for the Cornucopia, and Katniss follows because Peeta cannot outrun the pack on his injured leg. While helping Peeta climb, Katniss sees the mutts more clearly and realizes they have human eyes and numbered collars matching the dead tributes; she identifies Glimmer, Foxface, Rue, and others, which makes the attack feel even more monstrous.

The mutts begin leaping at the horn in coordinated waves. Katniss and Peeta struggle upward, but Cato recovers near the top and seizes Peeta in a headlock while wearing body armor that protects him from Katniss’s arrows. Because Katniss cannot shoot Cato without sending Peeta to the mutts below, the standoff holds until Peeta deliberately marks Cato’s hand with blood, signaling the unarmored target. Katniss understands, shoots through Cato’s hand, and the pain makes Cato release Peeta and fall to the ground, where the mutts swarm him.

Although Katniss and Peeta expect Cato to die quickly, the Gamemakers prolong the spectacle. Cato’s armor keeps him alive for hours while the mutts maul him through the night, and his screams become a new form of torture for Katniss and Peeta. During the cold, endless wait, Katniss improvises a tourniquet and bandages for Peeta’s torn leg with her shirt and an arrow, trying to keep him alive despite the blood loss and freezing air.

At dawn, Cato is still alive and Peeta is fading badly, so Katniss decides to end Cato’s suffering. She removes her last arrow from Peeta’s tourniquet, crawls to the edge of the horn, and shoots Cato in the head out of pity rather than revenge. After the cannon fires, Katniss and Peeta climb down and return to the lake, expecting rescue, but instead Claudius Templesmith announces that the earlier rule change has been revoked and that only one victor is allowed.

Peeta immediately offers his life to Katniss, and Katniss refuses to kill him or let him die for her. Realizing the Capitol needs a winner, Katniss takes out the nightlock berries she saved and proposes that they eat them together, denying the Games any victor at all. Peeta trusts her and joins the bluff. As they raise the berries to their mouths, Templesmith panics and declares both Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark the victors of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games.