At dawn, Din Kol and Captain Miljin assemble in the adjudication chamber under Commander-Prificto Vashta’s orders, expecting trouble around Fayazi Haza. Fayazi arrives with her two Sublimes (engraver and axiom), visibly shaken. Ana Dolabra enters last, blindfolded, and announces she will recount what she has learned to clarify the threat against Fayazi.

Ana skips re-litigating Commander Blas’s death (naming Captain Kiz Jolgalgan as the murderer) and focuses on the Haza estate party night. Ana states Jolgalgan knew the estate because Kaygi Haza had patronized her and brought her there repeatedly, letting her navigate servants’ routes and reach the roof. Jolgalgan poisoned the boiler with dappleglass, killing Kaygi after his steams. Ana then reveals Kaygi hosted a second private gathering for his favored officers—the ten Engineers later found dead—and argues they were poisoned indirectly: Kaygi’s open wine ewer absorbed spores during his bath, then the same ewer poured wine for the Engineers, infecting them at different rates.

Ana presses the consequences: Fayazi locked down the estate, burned Kaygi’s body, and did not alert the Apoths to contagion, which Ana implies enabled the later wall breach and its casualties. Ana then pivots to motive and broader conspiracy, citing Immunis Nusis’s story of a suppressed dappleglass cure and naming four cantons (Juldiz, Bekinis, Qabirga, Mitral) that obstructed it. Ana links this to evidence of Rona Aristan’s travel and money among those cantons and to Kaygi’s scribe-hawks to those same destinations after Blas died, proposing an old patronage network and a coordinated effort to block the cure during Oypat’s crisis.

When Fayazi’s staff protests, Vashta forces them to stay and listen. Ana claims the Hazas profited enormously because Oypat’s destruction reshaped land values and contracts, making it an enormous “land speculation” scheme. Ana then declares she has proof: a real sample of the dappleglass cure, stolen and replaced with water long ago. She alleges Blas kept one “third” vial as blackmail, and that Din unknowingly found it disguised as a “reagents key.” Ana further asserts she and Nusis anticipated this and swapped the key, placing the real one in a chest in Ana’s rooms.

Ana then accuses Fayazi’s “axiom” of being the twitch: the killer of Aristan, Suberek, and Nusis, sent by the Haza clan to retrieve the cure and keep Fayazi in line. Ana exposes the disguise by demanding simple math the “axiom” cannot answer. Fayazi breaks away in terror as Vashta orders an arrest; Miljin and Legionnaires close in with Din’s engraver’s bonds, and the twitch begins to submit. Tocsin bells erupt and green flares rise outside—signaling the leviathan’s arrival—and, at that moment, the twitch moves.