Din, Malo, and the wardens return to Yarrowdale at evening and signal the city with a red flare. Apoth crews immediately seize control of the situation, strip and inspect everyone for contamination, and place Din in an isolation cell lined with telltale plants. He endures repeated naked examinations and a decontamination treatment that removes every visible injury, then is told he has passed the tests but is still being held for observation.

After sleeping through confinement, Din is taken under guard to the advanced fermentation works, where Commander-Prificto Thelenai has assembled Malo, the wardens, and senior Apoth officials. Thelenai questions Din about the jungle and the transmutation they encountered, using his testimony to reconstruct events and the nature of the danger. Because Din wore a warding helm, his account is slow and fragmented, but he confirms the details of the vine-choked camp and the strange device at its center.

Just as Thelenai presses Din to describe that device, Ana arrives outside and loudly forces her way into the investigation. Through Malo, Ana asks whether the machine looked like stacked pots topped by a glass lid and chimney, and Din confirms that it did. When admitted, Ana explains that she studied canal theft records and found that the smugglers had not only stolen reagents but also specialized instruments and components. From that pattern, she deduces that the impostor built a degradation diffuser with a disperser, capable of breaking altered fertilizer back down into reactive leviathan's blood and spreading it as a mist.

Ana's conclusion shocks the Apoths because such a machine is highly advanced and should have been impossible for an ordinary smuggler to build. She argues this proves the impostor is an extraordinary expert and suggests he must have worked within the Shroud, meaning he is likely known to Thelenai and connected to Ghrelin. Ana then refuses to explain further unless she can first speak privately with Din and later with Thelenai and Ghrelin together. Thelenai, rattled by Ana's confidence and by Ghrelin's name, clears the room and reluctantly grants the request, leaving Ana, Din, and Malo alone.

In private, Ana stations Malo to listen for intruders and gives Din a vial reproducing the smells inside his warding helm, allowing him to recover his jungle memories properly. After Din gives a fuller report, Ana says the killer is not merely a thief but a calculated mass murderer using killings as messages. She identifies the words left at the jungle scene as an inverted quotation from Emperor Daavir about cruel men turning the world into "a savage garden," which matches the devastated transmuted landscape Din and Malo saw. Ana concludes that the impostor appears hostile to imperial rule, that his messages are likely meant for Thelenai and Ghrelin, and that he may be tied to some secret involving leviathan's marrow and the Shroud.

When Malo hears footsteps approaching, Ana realizes Thelenai has not yet seen the code Din found in the jungle. She orders Din to copy the symbols immediately, then pockets the written code as leverage before Thelenai and Ghrelin return. The chapter ends with the doors opening, just as Ana prepares to confront them with what she has learned.