Harrowhark is back in the atrium of Canaan House, overwhelmed by tea, heat, noise, and the attention of the assembled House heirs. When Teacher asks the Ninth House for an intercession, Harrow freezes, and Ortus recites the prayer of the Locked Tomb alone. Harrow silently resents the pity or amusement she imagines in the others’ gazes and feels acutely diminished beside Ortus.

After the prayer, Teacher praises Ortus’s ancient epithet and asks how to bless him. Ortus publicly asks to have his bones one day interred in the Anastasian monument, a warrior’s tomb Harrow knows he is unlikely to deserve. Teacher then distributes keys to the cavaliers; Ortus receives the Ninth House key and properly passes it to Harrow.

Teacher explains that Canaan House began before the Resurrection and became the site where the original disciples researched how to serve the Emperor without depending on him for immortality. He reveals that the path to Lyctorhood lies below the facility, in the old laboratories, where the first Lyctors left behind their work as a kind of road for the heirs to follow.

Teacher then warns that the facility contains the Sleeper, an unkillable being who sleeps but walks. The heirs must move quietly, travel in groups, and avoid waking the Sleeper, because if it wakes, everyone will die. The warning unsettles the gathering, and the priests send the pairs away with construct escorts.

While waiting, Ortus admits that he cannot protect Harrow from monsters and wishes she had chosen a different cavalier. Harrow insists that monsters are not beyond her and that Ortus’s duty is to stand, fight, and die only when necessary. Their exchange exposes Ortus’s fear and Harrow’s cruelty, but also her belief in her own necromantic power.

As a First House skeleton escort approaches, Harrow notices its movements are too responsive and sophisticated for an ordinary construct. Ortus briefly recites heroic verse, then asks why Harrow chose him; Harrow answers that there was no one else. After Ortus recommits himself to following her, the skeleton suddenly opens its mouth and asks, “Is this how it happens?”