Six lay incapacitated for days, wracked by physical pain and violent visions of dead Diviners and blood, waking to the absence of her sisters. The gargoyle tried to comfort her with stories, while Maude, Rory, and King Benedict (Benji) hovered outside her door debating how to approach her grief. They eventually entered, tended to her needs, and Maude coaxed her to eat, warning Six to wield anger outward rather than against herself. Their care steadied Six enough to sleep and recover.

On the sixth day, Six rose with a new, cold focus: to find the Faithful Forester’s lost chime, go to the Cliffs of Bellidine to kill the Heartsore Weaver, then return to the tor to face and annihilate the abbess. Six reframed the abbess—once a “mother”—as the sixth Omen, the moth, who had exploited Aisling’s machine and the Diviners for power.

As they moved through the Chiming Wood, Six noticed that locals revered Maude, and that many wore charcoal around their eyes and axes on their belts beneath banners reading “Only the wind can say what is to come.” Villagers asked Six for portents, but she offered only silence, feeling her faith stripped away by the Oarsman’s bite and her rage sanctified. Maude identified a sacred glen—site of former visions and royal ceremonies—where they could search for the chime once the knighthood arrived. Benji resigned himself to the role of ceremonial distraction while Rory teased him, and Six recognized her former eagerness for approval reflected in Benji.

On the eighth day, as they awaited the knights, the gargoyle needled Six and Rory about their unspoken feelings. A recalled scene of Rory tenderly changing Six’s neck bandages highlighted their growing intimacy, which embarrassed them both. In the village square, the gargoyle loudly prodded Rory to declare love, mortifying Six and amusing Maude and Benji. Their exchange was cut short by the knighthood’s arrival.

Back at Petula Hall, Maude delivered Six’s new breastplate and insisted on helping her don it, gifting it to her despite Six’s inability to pay. Maude then applied charcoal face paint, explaining the Wood’s tradition as a defense against birke—sprite predators resembling birch trees who now feed on flesh, favoring eyes. Six recognized them from her dreams of living birches with blinking knots. The knights arrived with skull-like paint; Rory’s stark visage struck Six anew.

They proceeded to the sacred glen, its air thick with pungent idleweed smoke. Five hooded Wood nobles welcomed Benji, praising the honor of hosting a daughter of Aisling. Inside the dense birches, animal remains hung with chimes created an oppressive, ritual atmosphere. On a dais, the nobles stripped Benji’s breastplate and knelt him, lecturing on foresters’ senses and the creed “Only the wind will tell us what is to come.” Benji and the knighthood answered “Ever but visitors,” while Six kept silent.

As more idleweed flared, Helena Eichel presented a velvet cushion bearing a gray stone chime—the very object Six had seen repeatedly in dreams. She struck it, calling the crowd to listen to the wind and feel the presence of the Faithful Forester, ending the chapter at the moment of the chime’s sounding.