Ephraim leads a ragtag fleet toward a Red Hand torchShip blocking access to the besieged mine. Lacking Blues or strong automation, the torchShip responds slowly. Following Ephraim’s plan, armed ships draw fire while civilian craft skirt the mountains to land. Pax pilots the Snowball with Electra aboard, dives beneath the torchShip, rakes its underbelly, and triggers missiles that snap the vessel in two, sending it into the sea.

Civilian ships land and unload thousands of armed miners and allies who overrun the Red Hand camp, taking many prisoners without mass reprisals. On landing, the crowd realizes Pax flew the Snowball and hails him as the Reaper’s heir—the “Son of the Rising.”

At the mine entrance, survivors reunite with families. Ephraim finds Lyria (“Rabbit”) and then Volga, emaciated but alive; they embrace and reconcile. Victra, newly freed and shattered by Ulysses’s death, nearly attacks Ephraim before Volga halts her, and Victra collapses in grief.

Later in Victra’s Attican estate, Volga seeks news of Ulysses and flips through unrest on Mars. Ephraim and Volga exchange stories and reaffirm their bond. Pax arrives with a box from Victra: a signal pass and a holodrop proving Xenophon was Volsung Fá’s inside man in the Pandora ambush, framing Ozgard and Amel. With Alltribe communications isolated, Pax asks Ephraim to return to Olympia to warn Sefi.

Ephraim takes Volga to Trigg’s monument, weighing myths versus messy truths, and decides Mars needs “another stubborn bastard.” He refuses Volga’s offer to accompany him, promises to return for breakfast, then meets Pax in the armory, dons Trigg’s ring, takes his heartspike, and asks for one last bit of magic to get him back to Olympia.