Ephraim observes the Ascomanni feast above the Bellona Stairs while Olympia burns, appalled by the city’s fall into slavery and violence. Xenophon offers him a place and rationalizes the massacre, claiming Olympia’s hypocrisy invited it. Ephraim rejects the White’s cold calculus, calling himself “human,” and secretly activates the power switch Pax installed in the heartspike.

When Xenophon escorts Ephraim to Volsung Fá, Ephraim slips the heartspike into Xenophon’s pocket. Fá dismisses Ephraim as unworthy and orders Xenophon to kill him quietly. As the controller’s kill signal is sent, Ephraim’s ploy works: the signal detonates the heartspike in Xenophon’s pocket, vaporizing the White and blasting the plaza.

The explosion devastates Ephraim. Blinded in one eye, missing an arm, and with a broken spine, he believes Volsung Fá dead and drifts toward acceptance, thinking Volga safe and embracing the end. The city around him writhes with burning Obsidians and terrified citizens as smoke rises into the sky.

Volsung Fá, hideously burned but alive, looms over Ephraim. In a final act of brutality, Fá rips Ephraim’s heart from his chest, calls him “worthy,” and bites it, killing Ephraim and signaling the triumph of Fá’s reign of terror even as Xenophon’s manipulation ends.