After freeing Keph from the Blood Sorcerers, the Harbingers prepare the Knights of Ithelias to hold the restored keep while its scattered people return. Demantrius leaves Vyr and walks west, advising her to master one magical discipline before attempting another. A message from Snake Eye Joe confirms that Zandra has been abducted along the western edge of the marshes, but the Harbingers first search Keph's caverns for a faster route. They discover a sealed Veyan archway and Ilk waiting beside a small fire. Ilk identifies several of their artifacts through the stories surrounding them, claims that his lord Callus watches the dreams inspired by the Harbingers, and reveals that Bjorn's necklace is linked to an immense Charybden. When Torrin attempts to activate the arch, he enters the Evenfall and finds another statue destroyed beside the Dark Scepter. A presence urges him to take the scepter before a warning breaks through, tells him that an unnamed male power is growing stronger, and forces him back to Keph.

In Keph's treasury, Torrin chooses a mysterious bone from among several magical objects. Touching it restores another vanished fragment of the Veyan keep and returns a living blue Veyan dog to the world. Far to the west, Snake Eye Joe and the remaining Dread Stalkers pursue the Lythans who abducted Zandra. A Rusticulum Judicator of the Chain hunts them until an unknown saboteur destroys a tower atop the golem. The saboteur is Trash King, whom an Amazonian survivor calls Grick. He reveals that he survived the destruction of the High Tower when Lyra's plea carried him to Tyve, where he emerged among the ruins of another version of the tower. He has since gathered refugees, scavenged the land, and fought the Chain by burying its undying servants beneath collapsed structures.

Trash King's allies warn that the Lythans have carried Zandra, whom he knows as Cecil, toward the Whispered One: a presence associated with a great tree that neither lives nor dies and a plague spreading through the southwestern land. The Dread Stalkers follow Trash King into the Lavender Forest and reach his hidden underground refuge, where roughly thirty survivors live around a found-object statue of Lyra. Trash King equips the pirates from his hoard with a sealed golden dagger, a black liquid recovered from a runic circle of corpses, a white mask taken from a body fused to a tree, a light-responsive crystal slab, three darts capable of ending undead, a severed silver spirit cord, and other strange supplies. After using a blue orb to sense Zandra's location, he agrees to join the rescue. The reunited company waits until morning, ending the night with soup, a toast to Trash King, and his promise that they will find their princess and escape Tyve.