At a seaside villa provided by Glirastes, Lysander visits Kalindora, frail and dying from Darrow’s poison. Amid gifts and well-wishers, she dismisses the crowd with a jammer and speaks plainly about Atalantia’s fixation on Lysander and Octavia’s corrosive influence. Kalindora confesses the moral decay of her lifelong service and prepares to share a final truth.

Kalindora reveals that Lysander’s mother, Anastasia, was a Reformer plotting with Revus and Nero against Octavia. On Octavia’s orders, Atalantia and Kalindora planted the bomb that killed Lysander’s parents. She further reveals Octavia used the Pandemonium Chair to erase Anastasia from Lysander’s memory. The revelation shatters Lysander’s self-conception, even as Kalindora insists Atalantia must never take the Morning Chair.

Kalindora explains she summoned the Praetorians to place Lysander where he could repair what Octavia and Darrow broke. She urges him to keep Rhone and Atlas close and commands, “Do your duty!” Overwhelmed, Lysander leaves and publicly rejoins Atalantia, who smiles beside him and later gloats over the wreckage of the Republic’s Senate and Darrow’s heart. News arrives that Kalindora has died.

At the Annihilo, Kalindora receives a sunburial: Praetorians honor her, Atalantia weeps, Atlas is silent, and Ajax drunkenly seethes, nearly challenging Lysander as Atalantia delivers the benediction. That night, Atalantia summons Lysander; he consoles her, accepts her demands for intimacy, and afterward lies awake, hollowed by the truth he must hide while he maintains the façade.