Balthazar resists the phrenomancer’s control needle as soon as it pierces his forehead, using sorcery to push back through the magical link and try to seize the attacker’s mind instead. For a moment Balthazar seems to gain ground, but the sorcerer outmaneuvers him by taking control of Balthazar’s breathing, forcing him toward drowning in the flooding hold. Baptiste, still in Balthazar’s rigid grip, suddenly breaks free enough to stab the sorcerer in the throat and then through the forehead, killing him and ending the mental attack. Balthazar recovers, but he and Baptiste immediately realize the hold is filling fast and their way out is under rising water.

Above, Jakob continues his duel with Duke Constans on the burning, sinking deck. Constans toys with him, easily evading Jakob’s attacks and mocking both Jakob’s stubbornness and the Chapel’s attempt to protect Alexia. Jakob knows he cannot truly beat Constans in a fair exchange and fights only to delay him, hoping others can survive or escape. Constans’s superiority becomes undeniable as Jakob, exhausted and wounded, struggles to keep standing.

In the rigging, Sunny tries to get Alex across a spar to safety while fire spreads through the sails and ratlines. Terrified but desperate, Alex forces herself to stand on the yardarm and jump toward Sunny, only to slam painfully into the timber and end up clinging to it, battered and barely conscious. Below them, Vigga’s wolf-form tears through the enemy galley, scattering and slaughtering oarsmen. In her feral confusion, the wolf attacks an armored foe and then begins ripping apart the mast itself, driven by instinct, rage, and flashes of old memory.

Brother Diaz sees that Alex is stranded above the mast the wolf is destroying, so he tries to stop Vigga by shouting at her as if she were still under control. The wolf turns on Diaz instead, and Diaz backs away while pretending calm, realizing too late that he has only drawn its full attention. As fire spreads and the mast begins to crack apart, Diaz flees across the deck and throws himself into the sea to escape. Moments later the damaged mast finally gives way, and Alex, still clinging to it, is hurled down with the falling spar into the water. Overwhelmed by the impact and exhaustion, Alex lets the sea pull her under.

At nearly the same time, Jakob’s strength fails in his duel. Constans slips behind him and runs him through from the back, apparently ending the fight. But Jakob, who knows survival matters more than honor and who cannot die easily, uses the moment to trap Constans in an embrace and deliberately fall backward, driving Constans’s own sword through both of them and killing the duke. Jakob is left pinned beneath Constans’s corpse as the ship sinks around him. Unable to free himself, he can only endure the agony until the sea sweeps over the deck and carries him away.