Niclays has been aboard the pirate treasure ship Pursuit for weeks, haunted by the memory of seeing the High Western Valeysa fly over the fleet. Three Seiikinese iron ships have been tailing them but refuse to engage. The Fleet of the Tiger Eye is heading east toward Kawontay to sell the captured Lacustrine dragon.

The Golden Empress summons Niclays to her cabin and reveals she speaks fluent Seiikinese—her use of an interpreter was a deliberate strategy to make hostages underestimate her. She demonstrates her shrewd understanding of people and confronts Niclays about what he truly wants: access to the captured dragon for his alchemical pursuit of eternal life. Niclays admits he is an alchemist who has long sought an elixir of immortality and believes Eastern dragon biology holds the key.

The Golden Empress produces Jannart's fragment of writing and threatens to burn it unless Niclays reveals its origin. He confesses it was bequeathed to him by Jannart, Duke of Zeedeur, the love of his life. She explains the fragment is part of an ancient Eastern text about a mulberry tree that is a source of eternal life. She has been searching for this missing piece for years, but it only completes the story without revealing the tree's location. She proposes a bargain: she gives Niclays the rest of the text—a thin silk-paged book with a gold-leaf mulberry tree on its cover—and if he can decipher the route to the tree within three days, he will share in the elixir. If he fails, she implies she will kill him.

Outside, Niclays despairs to Laya Yidagé, declaring he cannot solve the mystery. In an emotional outburst, he reveals the depth of his grief for Jannart, admitting he resents Jannart for leaving him and that he has been consumed by grief for years. Laya tenderly urges him not to become a ghost himself. Alone on the ship, Niclays recalls the devastating night he found Jannart dead at the Sun in Splendor inn. Jannart had lied about traveling to Wilgastrōm; he had actually gone to the ruins of Gulthaga, where a wyvern bit him. Knowing there was no cure for wyvern venom, Jannart took eternity dust—a poison granting a quiet death—and died holding the locket Niclays had given him and an empty vial.

In a fitful doze, Niclays dreams of Jannart's words about the fragment: that the characters varied in size and spacing in a strange manner, hinting at a hidden message. Niclays wakes with sudden inspiration, realizing Jannart had already identified the key to deciphering the text—the irregularly sized and spaced characters conceal the route to the mulberry tree.