Half an hour earlier, Harrowhark speaks with Dulcie Septimus as the River bubble collapses around them. Dulcie explains that Harrow’s body is not being puppeted by a revenant fragment or by the Sleeper; something else is moving it. Dulcie admits uncertainty, but says she wanted Harrow to know the whole truth before Dulcie returned to the River.

Harrow reacts to the revelation by rejecting the idea that she should remain passive or trapped. As the constructed facility buckles and tears open into the white absence beyond the bubble, Dulcie apologizes, then disappears beneath falling rubble and a shimmer of blue.

Standing by the Sleeper’s coffin, Harrow decides to escape. Harrow gathers the ruptures in the bubble and breaks it open, allowing the River to pour in. The scene shifts through drowning imagery: Harrow briefly relives being held underwater by Gideon in the Canaan House pool, then surfaces in the icy black water of the Locked Tomb.

Harrow recognizes the Tomb as home and swims not to shore but toward the central island and mausoleum. Inside, Harrow finds the chains broken and the resting place empty. Where the Body should be, Harrow finds the two-handed sword that had been in the Sleeper’s coffin.

Harrow climbs into the empty coffin and embraces the sword without fear, feeling comforted and drowsy. Harrow also finds a fake, obscene magazine clearly associated with Gideon’s humor, and smiles at it. As the place rocks like an explosion or a cradle, Harrow falls asleep, dies, or enters a state that may be both.