Eight and a half years earlier, Venli experiments with letters and beats inspired by human writing while Jaxlim, her mother and keeper of songs, falters mid-recitation—an alarming lapse. Jaxlim claims fatigue and sends Venli to find Eshonai. Their family, emboldened and bearing newly bestowed weapons, has seized one of the ten ancient cities on the Shattered Plains. Venli, uneasy about Jaxlim’s decline, searches for Eshonai.

At a scouting tower, Eshonai watches for returning humans and excitedly declares she may travel with them. Venli, frightened by their mother’s condition, fails to voice her concerns. Eshonai leads scouts toward distant smoke and returns the next day triumphant: the humans have come back.

Venli spends the day performing songs for the visitors, chafing at their interruptions for translations and precision she finds tedious. The presence of dull-minded parshmen unsettles her, and she avoids Eshonai’s celebrity. After fielding questions from onlookers about metalworking and lost forms, Venli slips away to the plateaus, longing for normalcy and dreading having to replace Jaxlim as keeper of songs.

There, a human woman with rings, Axindweth, approaches and speaks flawless listener tongue. Axindweth claims she was sent to find someone who remembers what was lost and hints at restoring former glory. She suggests forms of power once included healing, challenges Venli’s reliance on ancestral prohibitions, then produces a blood‑red gemstone. Axindweth instructs Venli to break it in a storm, promising “a path toward saving those you love.” Venli’s fear for Jaxlim makes the forbidden offer dangerously compelling.