In humid nighttime Manhattan, Hugo Barbary sits by the reflecting pool opposite Radio City Music Hall, newly thrown back into the past through a door. Disoriented and in torment, Hugo realizes the Bookseller woman used the Book of Pain on him and “dislodged something,” leaving him feeling split—like two selves fighting inside his mind.

Hugo experiences alternating rage and relief as the book-forged pain resurges with intent, trying to reclaim him. At the same time, another part of Hugo—awake for the first time in decades—remembers everything he has done and is horrified by it, resisting the returning cruelty and panic that shaped him.

As Hugo screams and clutches the pool’s edge, the pain becomes physical enough for the Book of Health he carries to treat it like poison. The pain suddenly forces its way out of him as a dark, intangible presence that erupts from his mouth and disappears into the night air.

Immediately clear-minded and unburdened, Hugo stands and marvels at the city as if seeing it for the first time. With the Book of Health and the Book of Faces, Hugo believes he has years and choices ahead, and he decides to abandon the constructed identity of “Dr. Hugo Barbary” and take a new name.

The expelled pain lingers unseen until it finds a passing tourist family, the Belroses. Their daughter Rachel balances along the pool edge, then jumps down—and the pain surges into her. Rachel feels abruptly altered: she becomes irritated and contemptuous toward her parents, while her original self questions the new thoughts; over time, Rachel’s true self fades and is locked away as the pain takes her body, remembers the books that created it, and begins to covet them.