Helena remembers the night she stole the Ithelion light from the Conclave of Tel'Dorath. Ten Vanari loyal to her brother Stefon Tevras help her reach a chamber where the moonlight of Sarexis and Lunaris is collected into Tears of God, but the central vial contains a more powerful prismatic light. Believing Stefon's empty vial can use that light to guide her, Helena pours the entire reserve into his necklace and leaves the original container behind. Every light in the conclave dies. The vial shows her Stefon in darkness, a chain wielder atop a mountain, a green obelisk, a familiar door, a pulsing beam, kingdoms crossing a black sea, and hands pulling her to safety. Vanis calls her by the full name Heli Nam-Nirah and banishes her as the Age of the Dark Moon begins.

In the present, the adventuring company disembarks at Birkenstock while Lily's Song withdraws into the Sequestered Sea with Zandra, Aggie, the guards, and the Dread Stalkers. The smoldering fishing town is covered in blood but contains no bodies, and tracks from a violent attack simply vanish. In a Yore and Gander warehouse packed with black glints, the party rescues Baglin Birken. He says living shadows invaded the town and turned into glints when sunlight struck them. Upstairs, Kaglin's self-inflicted death leaves an ouroboros necklace, three keys, a diary, fifteen gold, and an uncut emerald. The records connect the shipments to the Velpa Trading Company, Yore and Gander, and failing local mines. After burning the glint warehouse, the group walks six hours to an abandoned mining camp. Whisper secretly takes about five hundred gold, Normandy gathers maps and mineshaft records, and Bjorn grants a dying, infected young miner the death she requests after she describes a cavern of dark stars.

Equipped with masks and mining tools, the party enters the mine and follows the mapped route toward a chasm of black glints. Light-eating shadow creatures surround them, speak in the stolen voices of trapped victims, and demand flesh. The companions discover that ordinary light fades while their impure glints brighten, and killing one creature leaves the corpse of a prospector. Helena then exposes Stefon's vial. Its Ithelion light expands into a palpable sphere that reveals a cave filled with winged horrors and lets the group reach a forbidden workroom. Shipment 212 names Captain Solomon of Yore and Gander, and an unmarked stair descends into an ancient, magic-suppressing temple associated with the Tangled One. Four stone slabs stand beneath an enormous pure glint, and the inscription on the sole unbroken slab reads, "From the darkness there is light." Whisper accidentally falls upon it. The device extracts his darkness into a newly forming black glint, leaving Whisper good as the glint erupts and the episode ends.