Bryce confronts the Autumn King in his study while he examines the Starsword and Truth-Teller. She taunts him with the story of how Randall risked everything to protect Ember and young Bryce, making clear Bryce’s loyalty and concept of love come from the father who raised her, not the one who abused her.

Bryce snaps a gorsian shackle onto the Autumn King’s wrist, disarms him, and takes both blades. She forces him into a fireproof basement closet, threatens him into silence, and locks him in with minimal supplies, noting he has no electronics to call for help and that his wards don’t prevent teleporting.

Back upstairs, Bryce finds her dead phone, takes the Autumn King’s notebook, and studies his prism device. Testing her newly claimed magic, she channels starlight through the prism and sees it refract as a gradient from bright light into shadow, realizing Silene’s power has added a darkness beneath her light.

Hoping to supercharge herself, Bryce angles twin prisms and fires beams through them so the stripped light-and-darkness bands collide. She steps into the resulting burst, feels the power of light shaped by darkness, and uses the boost to teleport away—choosing to go “home,” which for her means Hunt.

On the Depth Charger, Ruhn keeps vigil beside unconscious Lidia as Flynn and Declan trade off watching him. Lidia suddenly wakes, confused and in pain, and when Ruhn tells her they are on the Depth Charger, she tears free of her IVs and bolts into the corridors, sobbing as she searches room after room.

Lidia races to a school area labeled by years, stops at a classroom marked Year Nine, and stares through the glass at two human-looking boys. Recognizing her own features in them, Lidia tells Ruhn the truth: the boys are not her brothers—they are her sons.