With Gavra's glint towers temporarily reignited by Helena and a Crystallic fragment, the Harbingers resume their battle against Wylas Velpa's forces for control of the Maelstrodomus. Normandy escapes the freezing harbor, Vyr infiltrates the prototype vessel, and Whisper drives its frightened crew away from the cannons while Bjorn persuades two enemy fighters that the city will die unless they help save Helena. Ernan returns to the pier for Bjorn, Torrin, and Silas, and the surviving combatants gradually abandon Wylas's cause. As Helena burns herself to sustain the light, Mathias Ephelthine speaks to her within the darkness. He warns that searching for Stefon will break her and admits that he wants to be carried to the Ithelion. The group loads its companions, Marquis Selendra Cassiandros, and as many survivors as possible aboard the ship. Bjorn is the last Harbinger to leave the pier. Vyr pulls the Crystallic away from Helena before it consumes her, the glint barrier fails, and the storm engulfs Gavra behind them.

The Maelstrodomus outruns the destruction alongside other refugee vessels, and the darkness stops during the night at the Southern Eye, leaving the island and Gavra's obelisk outside its path. With inadequate provisions and an overcrowded deck, the group begins training enough sailors to operate the prototype's mechanical systems before continuing toward the Maelstrom. Whisper asks Madame Iris and Lily to remain at the Southern Eye, gives Iris the Marquis's writ of passage, and promises to return with stories if he survives the mainland. Under Torrin's Zone of Truth, Wylas admits that he ordered the Arcanium destroyed as part of his attempt to seize political control of Gavra. He identifies Yore and Gander as an Arcanium shell company but denies knowing that black glints were poisoning Scarsden. In exchange for use of his ship and help reconciling with Cassiandros, he asks the Harbingers to recover a flawless fist-sized glint from an island near the mainland called the Gate of Sethis.

At the Southern Eye, Cassiandros agrees to provision the voyage and establish order among the refugees while warning that humiliating Wylas could turn him into a martyr. Religious conflict erupts around a statue of Eth as some survivors blame the goddess and call for the Tangled One. Normandy casts Moonbeam on the statue to quiet the struggle, but worshipers interpret it as a divine declaration that Gavra's destruction marks a new beginning. The Harbingers inspect the local keep under its insecure commander, Aemon Toft, and find an ancient Gavran helmet bearing a deer-like emblem hidden beneath his fireplace. A prisoner called Old Simon claims to hear screams and clanking from somewhere below. The quartermaster grants the group basic supplies, while the alchemist Filmus identifies Whisper's vanished dagger as Death's Kiss, a relic that takes two lives. The episode ends as the Harbingers barter for potions and prepare the Maelstrodomus for its voyage toward Tyve.