Helena awakens alone at a magnificent but decaying feast inside the Blood Fortress of Keph. A gaunt servant pours wine from the rare bottle Helena brought, and Acuras joins her while unseen creatures wait beyond the chamber. He explains that Keph survives by protecting its vassals from the Rusticulum and calls the hidden Evenari rebellion a cancer challenging his right to rule. Believing Helena's light can draw the Twilight Folk from their sanctuary, he asks her to pour a vial of black-purple liquid into their sacred well. In exchange, he promises safe passage through his lands for Helena's companions and agrees to protect Stefon if he can be identified. Helena accepts the arrangement and Acuras invites her to attend that night's ceremony as his honored guest, warning her to avoid anything sharp because parts of the castle lie beyond even his sight. A servant leads her away as dozens of ravenous beings enter the dining chamber behind her.

Elsewhere beneath Keph, villagers taken as tribute discover that their cage doors have been deliberately left open. Bran, Brett, Wisp, Clifus O'Gara, M, Constantine, Jhonk, and the other prisoners attempt to escape through a dungeon designed as a lethal game. Brett loses a hand to a trapped door, is stabbed by M when his blood threatens the group, and is later killed by a tentacled creature within a cell. Clifus opens a blue furnace growing crystals from its seams, glimpses a captive figure within its soul-draining radiance, and dies when M pushes him into the light. The surviving prisoners wander through shifting corridors and enter a masquerade where Helena accompanies Acuras in a peacock mask. Bran leaps through a stained-glass image of Acuras and is inexplicably returned to his own bed, carrying blood that proves the experience was real. Helena persuades Acuras to spare two young escapees by accepting them as servants, but he draws their hopes, emotions, and ambitions into the crystal at his chest. The remaining prisoners are seized for the ceremony.

Atop the mountains behind Keph, six rebels named Hank, Daki Jaytona, Sabiel, Samir, Celeste, and Henry prepare to disrupt Acuras's annual rite. Their unseen benefactors have supplied a single moonlit arrow meant for the Crimson Knight's heart. Below them, nearly two hundred Blood Sorcerers gather around a bottomless pit as Acuras offers ten prisoners to Belgor Vrack, the Eternal Blood God, in exchange for the power that protects Keph. When the rebels loose the marked arrow, Helena honors her agreement with Acuras and intercepts it. The arrow pierces her, becoming a beacon for a storm of projectiles fired from the mountains by hidden Evenari. Acuras immobilizes the rebels, draws blood through their bodies, and coalesces the sacrifices' blood above the pit, but the attack prevents the rite from reaching completion. Survivors force the marked arrow into Acuras, directing the barrage into him and breaking his concentration. The suspended blood crystal shatters, the unfinished rite mutates the Blood Sorcerers, and Evenari rescuers teleport the surviving rebels and prisoners away. Helena remains dying beside the pit until the gravely wounded Acuras crawls to her, places a hand upon her face, and reminds her that he promised she would not be harmed.