After leaving Venfallas, the Harbingers disguise themselves as impoverished travelers and continue toward Tch'nev with Elendra. Two white-clad Blood Sorcerers intercept the scouts, deride them as cattle, and threaten the imaginary village named in their cover story. The woman smells the companions hiding nearby, cuts her palm, and shapes her blood into a beetle before the pair vanish into mist. Striking the creature causes it to divide, but flames destroy the separated pieces. Before it dies, the beetle bites Whisper beneath the shoulder blades and dissolves into his bloodstream. Dark venom spreads through him, and Ned loses his divine connection and collapses while attempting to heal it. Kiera opens Whisper's veins, Vyr studies the infected blood, Nana draws some of it out, and Bjorn carries him onward, but nothing stops his decline. The party descends into a dry ravine lined with enormous closed-eyed statues and reaches Rathin's Hollow after dark, when burrowing predators emerge from the earth. Gatekeeper Wabash refuses to admit the infected Whisper, explaining that victims marked by Keph either return to the Blood Keep or die within a day. While the others enter openly, Vyr helps Whisper climb the wall amid a manufactured alarm.

Inside the town, the Harbingers divide their efforts to find a cure before sunrise. Normandy discovers a teenage devotee of the Blood Sorcerers secretly chanting for lifeless blood. Under pressure, the boy insists that only the Blood Keep can save Whisper. An unnamed priestess of Eth risks exposure by offering prayers for renewal and protection from the Tangled One, Keph, Dragdah, and ancient flames, but she has no known remedy. Ned remains unable to reach Azul. Wabash tells Bjorn that the sorcerers transform living blood into something lifeless and soulless, prompting Bjorn to appeal to Umtheras on the grounds that such magic violates the balance of life and death. Vyr lets Nana draw more poisoned blood from Whisper, while Aronin stays beside their unconscious friend. Near four in the morning, Whisper convulses and then becomes still. His fever disappears, his pulse returns to normal, and every wound, including the beetle bite and Kiera's incisions, closes with unnatural speed. No one can determine whether Nana, the prayers, the bloodletting, the mark itself, or another force saved him. He awakens hungry and apparently healthy, and the party conceals his survival from the fearful townspeople.

After breakfast at Babette Evans's inn, the Harbingers leave Rathin's Hollow before the truth can spread. They pass the monumental figures called the Grand Masters and travel for nearly another week through forest camps and mountain terrain until Tch'nev finally comes into view. At the Blood Keep, the two sorcerers who marked Whisper report that their cattle survived and ask permission to retrieve them. Their lord refuses, citing a promise to let the travelers go, but orders the pair to watch for their return. He suspects the survivors either found powerful allies or bargained with one of his great enemies and predicts they will find nothing if they come back. Helena then emerges from the darkness with red eyes. When the sorcerers discuss the party's recent refuge and guide, she declares that there will be no Evenari for them to return to.