At dawn, Talagray surges with workers and soldiers reporting to duty. Din Kol follows Captain Miljin through increasingly wealthy streets where balcony-dwelling gentry watch the passing troops; Miljin explains they cultivate patronage because service at the sea walls is required for future Senate eligibility.

Din and Miljin ride east across the foggy Plains of the Titan’s Path toward the Forward Engineering Quarters. Miljin warns that deserters and shaken imperials sometimes prey on travelers, noting swords are more useful against human threats than titans.

They arrive at the grim, smoky construction yards and the medikkers’ wing where many breach-injured personnel are recovering. To cover more ground, Miljin insists they split the list of eleven people to question about the dead Engineers, leaving Din to interview the first six while Miljin takes the remaining five.

Din’s first interview is Princeps Anath Topirak, an Apoth medikker badly injured in the breach, recovering in a drugged milky bath while sangri-snails feed on her severed wrist to regrow her missing hand. Startled awake, Topirak admits she was Signum Misik Jilki’s lover for three years and confirms that, for days before Jilki’s death, Jilki mostly went only between the quarters and the sea walls—making Din worry there may be no single shared exposure among all ten dead Engineers.

Pressed about anything unusual, Topirak reveals Jilki secretly went into Talagray for overnight meetings tied to quakes and wall destabilization on the eighth night before the breach, and once earlier on the seventh of Egin. Topirak suspected an affair because Jilki returned quiet, repeated that “The Engineers make the world. Everyone else just lives in it,” and carried a lingering smell of oranje-leaf and bitters despite washing. When Din offers to report what he learns, Topirak refuses, choosing to keep her last memories of Jilki untouched.