Din Kol watches Talagray recede into mist as he and Ana Dolabra ride away by carriage, quietly worrying about whether the city’s vast sea walls and engineered defenses can withstand what the seasons will bring. Ana draws him into a broader discussion of what the Empire is, and Din admits his view has shifted from seeing it as pure strength to seeing it as fragile, improvised, and dependent on constant care.

Ana argues the Empire resembles the titans it was built to fight: immense, complex, slow, and prone to “wounds” that worsen when citizens believe it is broken. Din presses Ana on her place in maintaining this “colossus,” and Ana reiterates that she performs the unglamorous maintenance work that keeps the larger system from failing—work Din has helped with.

Din asks for promised truths, and Ana confirms she is not an ordinary Iudex investigator. Ana reveals her supposed banishment to Daretana was a fiction devised by the Iudex conzulate; the Daretana Iudex office will now be closed, and Ana will instead stop at a border town to debrief the conzulate about the past weeks. When Din asks about Ana’s assistant and whether her death was staged, Ana refuses to share the assistant’s situation.

Ana explains she serves a special division assigned sensitive and unusually difficult cases, and after the debriefing she expects a new assignment. Ana adds that the conzulate will likely want to speak with Din, because Ana needs an assistant investigator and offers Din the role, praising his work in Talagray despite his dourness.

Considering the limited future awaiting him in Daretana, Din presents Ana with a gift: a box of illegal, hallucinogenic “moodies” (mood grafts) procured from a shady Talagray shop. Ana is thrilled but agrees not to take them before her debriefing, then treats Din’s lawbreaking as a good omen as Din settles back to rest.