Lift spends the day trapped in Urithiru under an illusion that makes her look like Navani, letting the court pretend the queen is still present while Navani is lost in the Spiritual Realm. Brightlady Khal and Brightlord Aladar keep her occupied with food, games, and staged appearances, but Lift is miserable. She feels useless, blames herself for failing Gav, and believes people keep her sidelined because she always makes things go wrong. Wyndle tries to comfort her, and the Sibling admits that Navani’s absence is weakening their awareness of the tower.

When the Sibling mentions hearing the phrase peeky time in a distant hallway, Lift realizes the voice belongs to her stolen talking chicken. Because the man who captured the chicken vanished with Navani, Lift concludes he must have hidden it somewhere in the tower. Refusing to wait for others, she has the Sibling drop the Navani illusion, uses a recorded message to fool the guards, and slips away with Wyndle to investigate the source.

The Sibling leads Lift to a ralkalest-lined chamber they cannot sense directly. When the door proves inaccessible, Lift cuts her way in through the floor. Inside, she finds her battered chicken in a cage and an elderly, tortured prisoner hanging naked from chains. Before Lift can free him, three hostile associates of the captor arrive. Lift first tries to flee with the chicken, but seeing the prisoner left behind makes her stop and choose to fight instead.

Cornered in the cramped room, Lift draws on her Light and instinctively uses Abrasion in a new, more controlled way. Her usually clumsy movement becomes precise as she races along walls, makes one thug lose footing, slams another to the floor, and counters a woman moving with extraordinary Feruchemical speed by abruptly creating traction beneath her. After the attackers are incapacitated, Lift recognizes the chained prisoner as Zahel. Guards arrive to cut him down, and Zahel tells Lift that what looked like clumsiness is actually untutored power, comparing her struggles to someone learning to move in Shardplate.

Zahel’s praise and his blunt conclusion that Lift needs a teacher hit her hard. Reflecting on Gav, her vision of her mother, and her long refusal to grow up, Lift realizes that pretending to remain ten has kept her from learning and helping others. Accepting that change will happen whether she wants it or not, she seeks Zahel out that night in the medical rooms and quietly asks how they would begin.