Rin wakes in panic, believing she has been captured again, but realizes she is unrestrained in a cabin aboard a ship. Dressed in Cike robes and weak from days unconscious, she climbs onto the deck and finds Ramsa, who tells her the surviving Cike recovered her from Speer after searching the ruins and the glassed sand where she lay.

Ramsa explains that the Cike had tracked the Federation after Rin and Altan failed to meet them, saw Altan's final fire, and later searched for Rin. Kitay appears, alive and relieved but visibly changed. When Rin asks what she did at the temple, Kitay takes her to the rail and shows her the distant ash cloud over Mugen: the island has erupted, its people incinerated, choked, buried, or doomed by ash and starvation.

Kitay confronts Rin about whether she chose the destruction. Rin admits she called the Phoenix and insists she does not regret it because Mugen tortured her, killed Altan, and planned further atrocities. Kitay argues that Rin has become like the Federation by killing civilians and children, and when Rin dehumanizes the Mugenese, Kitay asks whether that is what they thought of the Nikara. Their friendship fractures further when Rin declares that Mugen is not the final enemy and that she wants war against Empress Su Daji for betraying the Cike.

Rin withdraws to her cabin, refuses food, and seeks opium smoke to silence the Phoenix, which remains hungry and ecstatic inside her mind. Qara and Chaghan arrive, and Rin tells them Altan is dead and Feylen has escaped. Qara reveals that the twins fulfilled Altan's northern orders by breaking the levees of the Murui River, drowning Nikara villages to cut Federation supply lines. Qara tells Rin that both atrocities must be framed as necessary victories, though Rin begins to grasp the scale of what she has done.

At sunrise, the Cike hold a Speerly funeral ritual for Altan. Chaghan, grieving and bitter, argues with Rin about the Empress's betrayal, his Hexagrams, and the warnings he failed to make useful. He warns that Feylen and the God of the Four Winds may threaten all of Nikan, then reveals that Altan named Rin his successor before Golyn Niis.

Rin accepts that she is now commander of the Cike, a Speerly shaman, and no victim of fate. She and Chaghan make a pact as allies bound by grief, atrocities, and vengeance. Rin resolves to kill Feylen, overthrow the Empress, reshape the world, and use the gods as tools for terrible purposes.