Din Kol visits Apoth Nusis in her laboratory-like office to receive treatments, while Nusis cheerfully discusses how worms can infest and survive in nearly any part of a person. Nusis retrieves advanced immunity grafts from a heavily locked safe, explaining that such grafts are prime targets for theft. Din, aware that his engraver’s mind records patterns perfectly, offers to avert his eyes so he will not memorize the safe’s unlocking sequence.

Nusis produces four pellets—blue, white, yellow, and brown—and muddles them into milk so Din can digest them more easily. She instructs Din to watch for signs of adverse reaction, such as yellowing eyes or gum recession, and to contact medikkers if symptoms appear. When Din asks about psychological effects, Nusis realizes Din previously underwent engraver suffusions to become a Sublime and reassures him the grafts will not alter his mind.

Nusis remarks that Din must be unusually tough for having stayed awake through his transmutation, then adds a grim warning: most engravers do not last long in Talagray because of painful memories, especially among those who have visited the Plains of the Path. Thinking of Immunis Uhad’s worn face, Din drinks the mixture anyway.

Afterward Din returns, sore and hobbling, to the Iudex tower and tries to make his room feel familiar by unpacking his few belongings. Seeking ordinary routine, Din shaves in the bronze mirror while the fretvine tower shifts in the wind, then checks himself for the reactions Nusis described and finds none.

Watching his reflection triggers Din’s vivid recollection of his own Sublime transformation: medikkers mixing suffusions with milk, offering him sleep to avoid awareness, and Din insisting on staying awake to understand. Din remembers four agonizing days of hallucinations, headaches, insomnia, and warped time as his mind was reforged, leaving him with gray skin and a new kind of memory—perfect, absolute, and unending—so every scar and its origin remains permanently present to him.

Din notices scars on his back and recalls Captain Thalamis caning him during training, then tries to reassure himself he has endured worse. A faint quake trembles through the floor, and Din looks out into Talagray’s quiet night, seeing no warning flares. Din thinks ahead to the consequences if he fails his current investigation: more Engineer deaths, possible flares, and ultimately the distant walls falling.