Carl wakes badly injured after the arena battle and learns from Donut that the crawlers won, but at terrible cost. Firas, Gwen, Horton, and the Popovs are dead, many others are maimed or unconscious, Lucia escaped before the fight began, and Eva is buried but still alive. While the brambles continue lowering toward the battlefield, Prepotente argues with Osvaldo over an item Osvaldo looted from Imogen's body, which Carl recognizes as the memorial crystal he wants but is too exhausted to pursue.

As the survivors gather the wounded near the stairs, Donut keeps talking through her shock and then admits something is wrong: the deaths of her friends are not hurting as much as she thinks they should. Carl tells Donut that the emotional numbness is like a mask, a protection that lets her keep functioning through horrors that are only going to get worse. When Carl explains that the mask will come off later, when she is finally safe, Donut at last begins to cry, and Carl is relieved that she can still feel the grief beneath the shock.

Carl then realizes the Popov brothers may not be truly dead because nodlings split when they die. With Katia's help, the group digs through the bodies and finds two unconscious baby ogres, Maxim and Dmitri Popov. Zev explains that children are ineligible for the crawl, so the twins are automatically transferred to the surface kinder facility; the brothers have escaped the game entirely. The news transforms the mood, briefly replacing despair and looting disputes with amazement and hope.

Immediately afterward, Carl and Donut receive notices that they are co-warlords of the Princess Posse in Faction Wars. Carl uses the live feed to address the audience, boasting that the hunters failed, denouncing the rich sponsors who hide behind safety protections, and urging citizens of several factions to pressure their governments to vote for removing those protections. Zev warns Carl and then mutes him, but Carl believes he got the important message out. During the lull, Ren asks how Carl and Donut accomplished their dinosaur trick, and Donut explains she used a deep hole spell between the stacked ballrooms.

When the surviving crawlers prepare to descend, Carl discusses the Faction Wars vote with Donut and Prepotente. Carl does not expect most factions to endanger themselves, but he hopes public pressure will create leverage and help more crawlers survive to the tenth floor. Prepotente reveals he wants the memorial crystal because it concerns the supposedly not-dead goddess Apito, which also updates Carl's own quest about his son's murder. Prepotente, now the temporary party leader, orders everyone to stow their pets and descend at once, and the battered survivors head toward the ninth floor.