After Genevieve tried to gloat at the four-bell switch, Rowin dragged her away, warning her not to provoke their pursuer. He explained the heat flush during the switch was the game’s magic forcing participants to change rooms, and that staying put would feel like being boiled. On the upstairs landing they ran into Ellin, who was winded and sweaty from an enchanted “desert oasis” room full of scorpions and snakes. Rowin offered Ellin a place to hide, but she refused with barbed teasing and departed; he noted Grave had gone outside to retrieve the Hunting Blade.

Rowin showed Genevieve an enchanted meadow room but refused to enter, explaining that each spare room transforms into a dangerous landscape Knox designs, each containing a token for one-round immunity, but with only one exit and high risk. He guided her instead to a library that felt watched; he identified that Covin was likely nearby on the floor and that Covin’s Familiar, Satan, slept atop a shelf. Rowin located a secret shelf-door and pulled Genevieve into a drab, mirrorless hidden room with a gas lamp, a questionable bar cart, and a trapdoor leading to a kitchen tunnel.

Settling in to wait, they bantered about the bar’s contents and housekeeping, and Rowin explained the safe room’s protections and escape route. As the quiet stretched, Rowin prodded Genevieve about why she did not drink whiskey. They agreed to play a modified truth-and-lie game with three questions each. Genevieve asked about the rumored cure for Rowin’s mother. Rowin confessed he believed in it and had been trying to win annually to continue his research on the cure in the mortal realm, fearing Knox’s control in Hell and the others’ lack of belief or usefulness. He admitted guilt over not visiting his family without progress and, when pressed, revealed he ultimately wanted to free them all if they won.

Genevieve reassured Rowin that wanting freedom and hope was understandable, even if selfish by some measures, and she admired his resolve. Rowin then took his turn and asked three pointed questions: why she avoided whiskey, why she wrote letters to his father as her mother, and who Farrow was. He revealed he learned the name “Farrow” when Umbra found Genevieve drugged by demonberries and Rowin carried her back; she had murmured the name then.

Genevieve answered that she avoided whiskey because of Farrow, that she wrote the letters because her mother hid too much from her sister and she hoped Rowin’s father might be a Necromancer who understood being the “spare” sibling. She admitted she would not have left it alone even knowing the consequences. When pressed, she claimed Farrow was insignificant, which Rowin called a lie, noting how strongly he affected her. Genevieve described Farrow as poisonous and implied a damaging past relationship.

The conversation turned heated and flirtatious. Rowin, close and intense, suggested Genevieve had not been satisfied in a long time, and she challenged him about finishing what they had started at the masquerade. He deflected with teasing denial, though his gaze betrayed interest. Frustrated, Genevieve asked when the next switch would come, and the bells immediately rang, ending the scene as they prepared to move again.