While returning from Keph, the Harbingers camp outside a town destroyed by the Blood Sorcerers and the Chain. Vyr spots Demantrius approaching in the night and speaks with the ancient Umtheran about her reddened Ix Crystal, the fading Ithelion, and the history he has witnessed during more than two centuries in Tyve. Demantrius believes something is clawing through the weakening mountains, senses a great calamity to the south, and warns that the Harbingers cast a shadow whose purpose he cannot yet judge. He also tells Vyr that Normandy's fate is sealed: the Deathless Flame will eventually outgrow him, consume his soul, and seek another host for Emrys. At dawn, Demantrius follows his instincts west while the Harbingers continue to the Twilight Temple.

At the temple, the rescued children and their caretakers welcome the Harbingers home. Helena places her small statue of Sethis into the central monument, opening two dark chambers. One contains a Veyan forge capable of placing a single unknown rune upon a weapon. The other holds a captured Argylus associated with loneliness, suspended inside a rune-protected vat. When the Harbingers show the creature the Tome of Stars while surrounding it in companionship, the book's knowledge burns through the protective runes and cracks the glass. The Argylus briefly becomes a being of radiant light and reveals that the tome contains the soul of a scholar whom its kind manipulated into spreading fear and disharmony until the Knights of Ithelias ended her reign. The creature then returns to its fallen form, thanks the Harbingers for their friendship, and accepts the name Solitude.

Torrin restores the portal to Keph, then uses the Crystallic to force open Gavra's damaged gateway. Torrin and Vyr cross into the Maelstrom and become suspended between Tyve and the Evenfall until Sethis shelters Torrin within a protective bubble. She explains that the storm is not water but the erasure of the land, held in check by the Ithelion's light. Sethis asks Torrin to restore the Ithelion and then extinguish it forever, breaking the barrier between worlds so that her people can return from the Evenfall. She directs him southwest toward lightless followers of an idea called the Whispered One before forcing both travelers safely back through the portal. Later, Tamarack Vale trades the Harbingers the medallion that activates the temple's elevator. As the others begin ascending into the unexplored tower, Ernan secretly touches the gateway, illuminates an unknown glyph, and smiles before letting it fade.