Darrow, Sefi, and Mustang return from Asgard in stolen armor—Odin, Tyr, and Freya—dragging the bodies of two dead gods and five captured Golds. At Asgard, two sympathetic Greens helped them isolate other Golds and connect to Quicksilver’s operations, where Victra relayed that Sevro’s gambit seized roughly a third of Mars’s defense fleet as the Jackal countered.

Using the station’s biometrics, Darrow’s team hunted down the remaining Golds and bound them. They march the prisoners through the Spires, forcing the Obsidians to witness their supposed immortals subdued. Darrow resolves to use might instead of diplomacy to break superstition and win Obsidian allegiance.

They breach Alia’s council chamber. Darrow denounces the gods as false, and Mustang demonstrates that their “magic” is technology. Alia rejects the revelation and orders her people to kill the intruders. Sefi immediately decapitates Alia, refusing her mother’s command and signaling a total break with the old order.

Sefi opens Alia’s long-locked war chest, dons the Obsidian regalia, and confronts the bound Golds. When one threatens divine reprisal and another defiantly recites a battle poem, Sefi executes them all, obliterating the myth by blood. Mustang, uneasy, nevertheless accepts the necessity as Darrow recognizes there could be no keeping such prisoners.

Crowning herself upon the griffin throne, Sefi declares the gods dead and summons riders to rally the tribes. The Valkyrie and warchiefs answer her call, committing the Obsidians to Darrow’s war. As the Spires erupt in war fervor, Darrow and Mustang lock eyes, aware of the peril in the power they have set loose.