Din Kol and Signum Miljin meet an Apoths’ contagion crew at the Talagray stables, led by Signum Kitlan. Din shares Iudex Ana Dolabra’s lead: the only Oypati crackler stationed in Talagray’s Legion is Militis Drolis Ditelus, recently punished for repeated absences into the Plains. The crew equips for a spore-based contagion similar to dappleglass and rides out to find Ditelus and the Apoth traitor believed to be working with him.

On the road east, massive teams haul segments of a titan-killer bombard toward the sea walls, forcing the group to cut across rough country. At a forward outpost, the princeps confirms Ditelus is missing again amid quake panic and bombard preparations. Din questions her about Ditelus’s demerits and learns Ditelus usually returned from the west, near the ruins of an old Legion fortress crushed by a fallen titan.

Riding into the dangerous hills of the Plains, Kitlan warns that the land is rife with contagion. An Apoth tracker finds fresh blood, and the group soon spots Ditelus hobbling south, bleeding heavily and barely responsive. Kitlan’s crew dons warding helmets to filter contagion as they approach, and Miljin demands to know where Captain Kiz Jolgalgan is and what Ditelus has done.

Ditelus, in pain and delirious, says he is going “home,” describing Oypat as if he expects to walk it again in death. As he rages about justice and what was taken from his people, something begins to twitch under his shirt; Miljin retreats as dappleglass bursts from Ditelus’s chest, splitting flesh and rising in a towering, iridescent column that consumes him. Miljin orders pursuit of Ditelus’s origin point while Kitlan leaves Apoths behind to burn the contagion per protocol.

They reach the ruined fortress and find a crooked central tower with a well-maintained door. Inside is a dense growth of dappleglass suspending a dead, rotting woman with yellow hair. As the Apoths catalog equipment and samples, Kitlan identifies a full improvised lab—fermentation, purification, suffusion feedstock, and tanks of identical plants—and confirms the corpse is Captain Kiz Jolgalgan using her wall pass and documents, including falsified papers suggesting she was preparing to flee. Kitlan judges Jolgalgan died from a lab sealing failure that leaked spore-laden steam; Ditelus likely entered afterward and was exposed, and Kitlan warns that without helmets they would have died too. Miljin, unsettled by the timing and convenience of Jolgalgan’s “accident,” asks Din if it feels right, and Din cannot answer.