Ephraim refuses Holiday’s offer to hide, takes back his pistol from Lyria, and meets Gorgo, who escorts him under a sensory hood to the Duke’s Endymion stronghold. In the Duke’s trophy room—dominated by an ant colony and a severed Obsidian hand—Ephraim senses imminent danger.

The Duke tries to recruit and seduce Ephraim. Ephraim uses that to get the Obsidians dismissed, then strikes, seizing his Omnivore and the Duke’s datapad and calling Holiday. She tracks his beacon and reveals he’s in Endymion; the nearest team is two hours away, forcing Ephraim to act without backup.

To extract the children’s location, Ephraim drowns the room with music and maims the Duke with a bonesaw. The Duke admits the children are in a biometric vault two floors down, east wing. When Ephraim hesitates, the Duke lashes out with a subdermal wrist blade, stabbing Ephraim’s cheek. Ephraim smashes him with a bottle, regains control, and drags him through the corridors, slipping past bodyguards and overhearing talk of a feared “she” coming from Lost City and a captured Howler.

At the vault antechamber, three guards confront them. The Duke headbutts Ephraim, sparking a firefight: Ephraim kills an Obsidian and another guard, then executes a surrendering Brown. He reloads his Omnivore with scavenged rounds and forces the Duke to complete the retinal and voice authentication.

The vault opens onto a dragon’s hoard of cash, art, and stolen treasures. In a cleared space sits a filthy cage with a mattress and waste bucket—holding the most valuable children in the worlds: Pax and Electra.