Sunny wakes badly injured in a ruined storeroom while fighting still rages nearby. Sabbas's hunter, the Man-Catcher, stalks her with a forked spear, forces her to hold still to avoid being found, then catches her in a weighted net when she finally has to breathe. He realizes she is an elf and starts imagining her value as a captive.

Elsewhere in the ruined church, Jakob challenges Sabbas to a duel to the death in order to buy the others time and exploit Sabbas's pride. Sabbas accepts, dismisses his valet's warning, and dramatically reveals white wings, explaining his title, the Angel of Troy. The duel quickly shows Sabbas's advantage: he uses wind and flight to batter Jakob, wounds him repeatedly, and finally drives a spear through Jakob's chest.

As Sabbas turns toward the altar where Alex, Brother Diaz, Baptiste, and Balthazar are hiding, Alex prepares to fight anyway, because waiting means certain death. Baptiste finally gets the crossbow loaded and shoots one of Sabbas's sorceresses through the forehead, but the surviving sister is the geomancer, and her rage makes the church itself begin to come apart. Even before the others can react, Jakob rises again from his impalement, proving he is not finished and forcing Sabbas to order a general attack.

At the same time, Baron Rikard appears and offers to trade the Man-Catcher his life for Sunny's freedom. When the hunter tries to trap him as well, Rikard turns to black vapor, slips past the attack, reforms behind him, and kills him by feeding on him. Rikard then calmly frees Sunny, and the scene underscores both his usefulness and how terrifying he becomes when he feeds.

Back in the church, Brother Diaz realizes the abbey stands over mass plague burials and shouts the clue to Balthazar. Alex goads Balthazar's pride until he commits himself, and with Alex and Baptiste physically anchoring him, Balthazar reaches deep beneath the monastery and tears up the ancient dead. The nave collapses into a huge pit as a vast fused mass of plague corpses erupts upward, dragging in the surviving sorceress, the valet, several hunters, and finally Sabbas himself despite his wings. When the necromancy ends, the dead fall still, Sabbas is gone, and the surviving members of the Chapel are left alive but horrified amid the shattered ruins.