Pollux rejects Ruhn’s offer and instead attacks Lidia’s bound sons, unleashing a killing strike at Brann. Lidia moves impossibly fast, shields Brann with her body, and erupts into white-hot flame that blasts Pollux back. Revealing herself as Daybright’s true form, Lidia orders Ruhn to free her sons and get the wounded Tharion (Ketos) to a healer, while she confronts Pollux.

Lidia explains her fire is an ancient shifter bloodline gift, the “old” kind of shifter power Danika Fendyr believed existed, and that she is now free of the Asteri parasite after taking an antidote made by her sister. Pollux attacks again, but Lidia traps him and incinerates him from the inside out, reducing him to ash. Ruhn frees Brann and Actaeon, and Lidia leaves to help the larger battle, telling Ruhn to keep her sons safe and offering forgiveness for Ruhn having shot her.

As Lidia races onto the battlefield, her suppressed fire surges fully to the surface. She annihilates Mordoc, Gedred, Vespasian, and their dreadwolf pack, then burns down incoming Asterian Guard angels and advances on the war-machines whose missiles threaten to devastate everyone nearby. Believing she may need to sacrifice herself to stop the launchers, Lidia charges—only for the machines’ barrels to melt first as three fire sprites (Sasa, Rithi, and Malana) reveal themselves and help trigger catastrophic explosions inside the tanks.

A fourth, stronger flame arrives: Irithys, the Sprite Queen, who explains the sprites came after seeing Bryce and Hunt’s broadcast and after being contacted by the others. Recognizing Lidia’s fire, Irithys joins her, and together the sprites and Lidia combine their flames to melt and rupture entire lines of war-machines. Lidia uses the last of her power to shield allied fighters from shrapnel by melting it into raining molten metal, and she briefly allows herself to hope as imperial forces die in waves.

Back in the palace, Ruhn searches Tharion’s pack for the volatile antidote vial and drinks it as two angels return. The potion spikes Ruhn’s abilities: he blinds the angels with concentrated starlight, uses shadows to kill them, and then discovers healing magic in himself, which he uses to knit Tharion’s chest wound closed. A palace-shaking ripple—like the terrible impact of an Asteri dying—passes through time, but Ruhn keeps healing until Tharion stops bleeding.

Ruhn shoulders the unconscious Tharion and escapes the evacuated palace with Brann and Actaeon into the streets, where he sees the battlefield split between Pit-darkness and distant firelight that must be Lidia. Ithan Holstrom arrives carrying the Godslayer Rifle and urgently asks after Bryce; a flare from the palace makes Ruhn fear Bryce and Hunt walked into a trap. Ruhn tells Ithan to run and orders the twins to stay close as they move toward the danger.