Bjorn and Bjork reunite with the Harbingers at Karn after planting flowers from Norn outside the Twilight Temple. A cage lowers from the darkness of the Watcher's tower and carries the group to a crystal gateway high above the clouds. Normandy crosses the portal and glimpses a vast mountain civilization whose architecture resembles Helena's lost homeland. Emrys warns that they are not meant to enter and may never return if they remain. Bjork follows before Helena pulls him back, and the portal closes. The Watcher identifies himself as Octelgaron, a High Elf of Teldoroth twisted by Tyve's darkness. He opened the gateway to show the Harbingers what his people lost and urges them not to delay. He describes three possible ways through the Dios Ostium: overwhelming force, a key bound to blood and heart, or a shadowed path found only by surrendering one's light. He then grants Bjork a shrike of his own.

The Harbingers travel south to the Village of the Exiles, where Snake Eye, Trash King, and their followers have conquered the settlement and killed those who resisted. Trash King recounts how the destruction of Adra's High Tower cast him into Tyve and explains that he seeks the Ithelion's light to heal Lyra. The Harbingers force the pirates to stop the fires and begin repairing the harm they caused. Torin heals the chief, Gord, from a curse inflicted through trade with the Lythans. Simothy, a blinded former ferryman, remembers whispers, visions, and a masked figure within the swamp. A child returned by the Lythans describes other children suspended like screaming strings from an immense willow while a masked woman tested whether their souls could survive. Torin restores the child's manipulated soul, and the village begins to trust the Harbingers. Soggy Dan then returns a Crystallic fragment that he had been using as a fingernail file, allowing Torin to join another piece to the artifact.

During the night, Vyr admits to Helena that her growing soul magic has created a compulsion to consume life. Helena helps her hunt an elk-like swamp creature, but after Vyr drains its soul and leaves it dead, the animal rises and walks away. The following morning, the Harbingers leave the pirates and Trash Seekers to rebuild the village while they fly toward Slyphash and the enormous willow called the Whispering One. Voices enter their minds as they approach. Vyr speaks with the presence, which demands that she choose whether she stands with or against the tree and claims that Zandra now belongs to it. The whispers drive the shrikes into a panicked fall until Normandy's Twilight Sanctuary breaks their hold. The Harbingers land in a clearing north of the swaying willow, where masked figures silently rise from the surrounding water and close in around them.