Rin registers for her second year as the only Lore apprentice under Jiang, so unusual that the clerk has to improvise her armband. She continues mandatory classes with other masters, but spends half her days with Jiang, who tells her that in the Trials she called a god and the god answered. Jiang says his purpose is to keep Rin sane after her glimpse beyond ordinary reality.

Jiang trains Rin through strange, difficult exercises meant to alter her perception and discipline her mind. He demonstrates impossible powers over wind, leaves, water, trees, and shadows, forcing Rin to accept that the supernatural is only what she has not yet understood. He sends her through extensive research on shamans, gods, religions, and psychedelics until she begins to see a connection between altered consciousness, the spirit world, and communion with gods.

On a mountain lesson, Jiang explains that entheogens can help prepared shamans enter the Pantheon, but he forbids Rin from using them until she can properly meditate. When Rin grows impatient, Jiang warns that earlier Lore apprentices went mad after reaching for divine power too quickly; some were institutionalized, and others were sent to Baghra. Jiang insists meditation is necessary because hatred, impatience, and attachment to the material world will keep Rin from safely reaching the gods.

Outside Lore, Rin feels increasingly separate from her classmates. Kitay worries about her after hearing other students are afraid of her, while Nezha becomes the new star fighter in the rings and Jiang refuses to let Rin compete. As the year progresses, tensions with the Federation of Mugen escalate through border violence, economic retaliation, Han's departure to join his father's battalion, and the rise of the nationalist Emperor Ryohai, leaving Sinegard anxious that war may be coming. Jiang refuses to discuss the Federation or his own war memories.

After nearly two years of meditation training, Jiang sends Rin alone to a mountain cave with a bitter tea and tells her to meditate as long as necessary. Rin endures hunger, disorientation, loss of bodily awareness, and visions until she reaches a tiled room and meets a woman who resembles Altan. The woman warns that Rin will be offered immense power, but the Phoenix demands suffering and blood; Rin admits she can give the Phoenix blood if it gives her power. Rin then sees burning Speerly bodies, bones dancing from ashes, the Phoenix, and finally the Pantheon.

When Rin wakes, Jiang confirms that she has found the gods and tells her she now understands her connection to the cosmos. Rin realizes Jiang is not mad and accepts that gods are natural forces underlying reality. Jiang, however, says the purpose was to cure Rin's imbalance with fire so she can still it, not wield it. Rin hides her disappointment and her encounter with the Speerly woman, deciding privately that if Jiang will not teach her to call the Phoenix's power, she will find a way herself.