Long before Helena came to Tyve, she sits beneath the gold and silver trees of Tel'Dorath with her brother Stefon and their parents, Jezaphit and Sybil. Her father describes the Unison as creation's first chorus and Solarus as its first note, whose perfect light shattered the primordial darkness and gave form to the universe. When Solarus touched Nabell, the contact fractured the world and left behind the undying light called the Ithelion. Sybil asks the children what that light truly represents. Helena first calls it Solarus's heart, but her father teaches that the Vanari seek truth within themselves and others. To him, the greatest darkness is truth obscured by the lies of the past, and the Ithelion is truth made manifest.

As the Harbingers approach Piln, its aurora fractures across the sky and each of them experiences the sensation of reaching toward the Ithelion while an unknown voice says, "I'm sorry." They awaken in carriages near the Wintere Woods with two weeks missing from their memories. Normandy's arm is badly burned, Vyr's X-Crystal is cracked, Bjorn bears a new scar across his face, Ernan has been stabbed through the abdomen, Torrin's joined pieces of the Crystallic are gone, and Helena's vial no longer contains light. Madame Iris, Lily, Silas Palligref, and what may be the Arcanium's last survivors travel with them, but none can explain how they escaped Piln. Brill reunites with the group after surviving a separate catastrophe in the Shattered Isles, where Xandra's clash with the Tangled One devastated the ship and killed most of its crew. Although Brill experienced the missing weeks normally, Piln's light appears to have gone out only hours ago for the rest of Scarsden.

In a frightened Gavra, an elderly man claiming authority within the Arcanium invokes a preservation contingency and persuades Marquis Selendra Cassiandros to admit him to the Sanctorum Obelisque. He opens its portal with a rune-shaped key, but a black-armored Rusticulum emerges, decapitates a guard, and chains four others to its will. The Harbingers break the chain controlling Lendo Malorian and battle the construct while Bjorn struggles with memories of his earlier defeat by the Chain. Whisper stabs it with the Hidden Father's black dagger, which liquefies into poison and destroys the Rusticulum from within before spreading into Whisper's arm. Torrin finally tears the poison free. Brill then discovers that the supposed elder was a low-ranking charlatan who apparently murdered the true intended survivor and stole his medallion, robes, and book of vital knowledge. Outside, tangible darkness climbs Gavra's walls, howls rise beyond the city, Torrin sees structures belonging to his forgotten people shifting through the present, and a colossal storm advances from the east.