With Aran Melosis dead, the Harbingers finish the battle within the Whispering One's willow as its last druids and living vine continue attacking them. Helena grasps the vine and discovers two presences within the tree: the mortal souls sustaining the plague and an ancient, forgotten consciousness whose memories could activate the Veyan device in the Golden City. Trusting Torrin to find another way to restore his people, Helena chooses to free the trapped souls. With Bjork's encouragement, she overcomes the tree's resistance, the willow withers, and the plague lifts from the surrounding swamp. The mortally damaged Lythans die, but the others regain their souls and living bodies. Bjorn then rallies the survivors around Skjold as a unifying ideal rather than a single chief, and they begin traveling toward the ruined stronghold of Slyphash. Before leaving, Torrin recovers a spear component of the All-Blade from the dead tree.

Normandy identifies Aran Melosis's five-bladed amulet as a sending stone and impersonates the fallen god while contacting Angela Thedon. She reveals that Whisper and Ernan are both needed to open the Dios Ostium, warns that Draxus Cale grows stronger with every link added to the Chain, and threatens to send Mathias Ephelthine inland when Normandy's deception begins to fail. The stone shatters after Angela realizes that Aran is no longer speaking. The Harbingers fly ahead to Slyphash, where they find abandoned Lythan ruins, tracks leading from the keep, blue light behind its windows, and supernatural darkness gathering around it. During the night, Mathias attacks the newly freed Lythans and kills several of them. Normandy confronts him while Vyr secretly restrains him with magic. A terrible roar from within Slyphash unsettles Mathias, and he withdraws after warning that the Harbingers cannot defeat Draxus or open the Dios Ostium.

The Harbingers rush toward the keep and find Bjorn defending himself against an unknown attacker in the darkness. Torrin and Helena drive the assailant back before another blue-skinned Vey orders the fighting to stop. Torrin identifies himself and asks to understand what happened to their people. Inside Slyphash, he meets Thalmos, Vendurante, Melisandre, and other surviving Vey who recognize him as the secondborn son of their king but question whether he is the heir they require. Vendurante leads Torrin through an illusory wall and deep beneath the fortress, where Enarja Thol and Phelan Rote help sustain a hidden operation. In the lowest chamber, Torrin discovers two enormous dragons chained to the walls while their light is siphoned through a white crystal into a swirling Veyan orb. Diseased darkness spreads across the black glints beneath them, revealing that the plague has been gathered below Slyphash.