Before dawn, Din is awakened on Malo’s boat when the wardens smell a human corpse drifting downstream from the camp they plan to raid. When the body reaches them, they discover it has been grotesquely transformed: fishlike skeletons seem to burst from the torso, and tubers and roots have replaced the face. Din and Tangis agree it looks like a terrible contagion, so Malo orders everyone into warding helms before they continue upstream.

As the party nears the camp, Sabudara spots a watcher in a treetop. Malo and two wardens shoot it with uncanny accuracy, but the figure does not react. When a warden retrieves it, Din finds it is not a living sentry but a human-shaped mass of vines and flowers containing a belt buckle, coins, buttons, and human bones arranged where they would have been in a real body.

That discovery leads Din to a conclusion he has resisted speaking aloud: titan’s blood has warped human beings and surrounding plant life together. Malo recognizes similarities to the Shroud, and a scout reports more plant-people in the jungle and a dense vegetal growth where the camp should be. The group goes ashore, finds several more human figures frozen as if fleeing, and reaches a massive wall of interwoven branches and blooms blocking the trail.

Din questions how they can still be alive if titan’s blood is present, since helms alone should not fully protect them, but neither he nor Malo can explain it. He then draws his unusual green blade and cuts a passage through the living barrier, with the wardens following behind. On the far side, Din enters a dim clearing and is so horrified by what he sees that he can barely move or speak, and the others react with gasps and screams when they join him.