On Feather Island, the aftermath of a massive earthquake leaves the scholarly community shaken. The sea has killed two scholars and deposited the body of a young Seiikinese dragon on the beach—boiled alive by the heated sea. Tané and Elder Vara visit the carcass at sunset, and the sight of the dead god deeply disturbs everyone. The elders conclude the dragon was boiled by the sea itself, an unprecedented and sinister omen.

Elder Vara arranges for a visiting surgeon, Doctor Purumé Moyaka, to examine the mysterious lump Tané has carried in her side since childhood. Tané initially resists because the Moyaka name is linked to the man who sheltered Roos, the outsider who threatened her and Nayimathun. Elder Vara reveals he and the High Elder know the full truth of Tané's disgrace. Tané reluctantly agrees to the examination. The doctor gives Tané a painkilling drug administered through a pipe, numbs the area with ice, and makes an incision. Just as Moyaka discovers something unexpected inside the lump, fire-breathing Wyrms—creatures unseen in the East for centuries—attack the island.

Elder Vara sends Tané toward a bridge crossing a ravine to reach shelter while he and Moyaka search for stragglers. Drugged and bleeding, Tané runs for the bridge, but fire-breathers destroy it in stages, killing scholars who fall into the ravine. As Tané stumbles and her wound tears open, the object embedded in her side slips free: a jewel no larger than a chestnut, glowing like a star imprisoned in stone.

A fire-breather lands before Tané on the ruined bridge—a terrifying creature of black scales, coal-red eyes, and bat-like wings. Unarmed and resigned to death, Tané instinctively thrusts the jewel toward the beast. It blazes with blinding white-cold light, and the fire-breather recoils in pain. It calls to its kin, and all the attackers flee into the night. The far side of the bridge collapses into the ravine.

Tané crawls back to Vane Hall, buries the jewel in the courtyard soil to hide it, and finds Moyaka's surgical case in the ruined healing room. Alone, bleeding heavily, and with the painkilling pipe shattered, she threads a needle and begins stitching her own wound shut, determined to endure the pain as penance for the suffering she caused Nayimathun and Susa.