Nora, in the Midnight Library, tells Mrs Elm she hates the process and wants it to stop. They argue about pain and the inevitability of hurting others. When Nora insists on quitting, the library shudders, the lights fail, and the chess table overturns. Mrs Elm explains the library exists through Nora and is endangered by her surrender, reminding Nora of the will to live she felt after the polar bear encounter.

As Nora recognizes that many of her regrets were misdirected, the tremors subside. Books remain scattered, but the lights return. Mrs Elm directs Nora to reset the chessboard and cautions her away from the fallen books, steering Nora’s focus back to the game and to steady progress.

Mrs Elm recalls Nora’s old habit of losing her strongest chess pieces early and offers a lesson: "the game is never over until it is over." She explains that even a pawn can become a queen if it keeps moving forward, urging Nora to see persistence as power and to continue step by step.

To anchor this mindset, Mrs Elm asks Nora to remember a day by the river when she was seventeen. In that memory, amid family strain, Joe’s impromptu party, and Ravi’s talk of swimming, Nora—drunk and provoked—accepted a dare and began to swim the river before Joe could stop her.

The library then partially transforms: a corridor turns to flowing water, the floor to grass, the ceiling to sky, while Mrs Elm and the books remain. Nora watches her younger self in the river at dusk, poised on the edge of a consequential recollection that may guide her next step.