Ana lays out a new theory before Kardas and Malo: the man who arrived in Yarrowdale as Mineti Sujedo was an impostor, because the real Sujedo was kidnapped on his journey north. Ana argues that the kidnappers took Sujedo’s blood, urine, clothes, and documents, altered another man to resemble him at a distance, and sent that man into Yarrowdale to pose as the missing Treasury officer. To avoid discovery, the impostor kept others away by claiming illness, planted Sujedo’s bodily traces in his room, staged an abduction, and then escaped.

Ana then explains how the locked-room disappearance could have been faked. She produces the altered iron lodestone and proposes that the impostor used one lodestone to move the window lock back into place after climbing out, creating the illusion that no exit had been used. Instead of descending the entire tower, Ana reasons that the impostor crossed into nearby vacant rooms and escaped through an unguarded chamber below.

The group searches the lower vacant room again. Kol finds that one shutter lock has been sawed through, confirming forced access, and Malo detects disturbed mold and footprints leading to a loosened brick in the wall. At Ana’s instruction, Kol removes the brick and reveals decomposed clothing hidden inside; Malo identifies chemical treatment meant to destroy scent, hair, and skin traces. A Treasury herald of the Order of the White Clove is recovered, linking the ruined clothing to Sujedo and showing that the impostor changed there before leaving in different garments.

This evidence convinces Ana and Malo that the impersonation was deliberate, highly informed, and designed to defeat both ordinary investigators and Apoth tracking methods. Kardas asks why anyone would go to such lengths, and Malo realizes the answer: access to the Iyalet vault. Ana concludes that the false Sujedo’s brief visit to the bank was the true objective, which sends the Treasury delegation into panic and redirects the case toward whatever was done in the vault.

As Kol escorts Ana back, they discuss the remaining gaps. Ana believes the staged disappearance distracted everyone from the real crime at the bank, but she still cannot explain how the impostor exercised Sujedo’s blood authority. She considers and doubts several possibilities, including organ transfer or some unknown method involving living authoritative blood, and ends the chapter disturbed by how much insider knowledge the impostor possessed about the delegation, the bank, and the safes.