Episode 05 Synopsis

The travelers leave the Wintere Woods with Snake Eye Joe and the Dread Stalkers after Whisper convinces the pirates to follow his group toward Gavra. Vyr secretly drains the life from a squirrel to satisfy her growing need to use magic, but Th'Marck witnesses the act and rejoins the party. At the edge of the forest, Whisper's former companions Magrit Marigold, Tavros, and Old Maggie disappear toward the city while the others camp beneath the mountain. The following day, the travelers approach Gavra's immense glint-lit walls with the pirates. Th'Marck consumes a glint to become invisible, Whisper bribes a gate guard to ignore the Dread Stalkers' missing papers, and the entire company enters the prosperous capital.

The group crosses Gavra toward the great coastal library while the pirates remain in the central square. Along the way, a strange potion seller gives Helena a blue vial and warns that it is not Helena's light that needs saving. Rue then experiences a vision of Gavra before the city existed: the ancient stone tower stands beneath a purple sky, and someone leads him through its interior to a pool that feels like cold air instead of water. Near the library, an assassin named Blink strikes Rue with a poisoned dart after mistaking him for Phineas Moon. The group pursues Blink through a hidden passage, forces him to surrender the antidote, and learns that the Arbiter issued a valuable contract upon the blue-skinned man in a tall hat who travels with a panthex. Blink promises to correct the mistake and escapes.

At the library, Normandy learns that his old associate Jonas Lowery was murdered there. When the librarian refuses the group access and catches them taking a book, Normandy leads most of the party toward a concealed entrance beneath the building. Whisper and Ernan instead accompany Magrit and Tavros to the Reef, where Whisper visits his imprisoned grandmother, Graham. She reveals that Whisper's mother never abandoned him: Graham found him washed ashore as a refugee with the mysterious key already around his neck. She identifies the chained-wolf symbol on his recovered ring as belonging to the Cult of the Iron Chain, warns that the answers to his identity lie upon the mainland, and tells him to present the ring to the Residuum as the greatest mark they have ever seen because the ring is itself a key. Graham refuses rescue and sends Whisper away to begin a new life with the companions who may now protect him.