Harrow wakes immobilized in a chair being pushed through the Erebos. Someone has tied a nerve in her neck with astonishing precision, leaving Harrow conscious but unable to move below the neck. Harrow has her letters hidden in her clothes and has bound the hostile sword to her arm with bone, suggesting that Harrow acted during a period she cannot remember.

The person pushing Harrow is the Saint of Joy, an ancient Lyctor later named Mercymorn. Mercymorn overrides a lieutenant who says God ordered Harrow not to be touched, then makes the lieutenant faint with a precise attack on the kidneys. In an elevator, Mercymorn examines Harrow’s face without permission. Harrow breaks the nerve manipulation despite the danger, and when Mercymorn asks Harrow’s age, the Body appears and tells Harrow to lie. Harrow says she is fifteen, and Mercymorn reacts with relieved disgust.

Mercymorn brings Harrow to a shuttle where Ianthe is already waiting. Ianthe says Mercymorn insulted her too and complains that they are being sent away from God’s personal retinue. Harrow notices a Seventh House Cohort necromancer completing an expert blood-made ghost ward, while overheard conversation reveals that the Cohort has lost three warships and eighteen thousand soldiers to orbital radiation missiles.

God arrives, embraces Mercymorn, and speaks with Admiral Sarpedon about leaving the Erebos. God orders the ship renamed Seat of the Emperor and sent back to the war effort. Inside the shuttle, God finds the Seventh adept dying after using her own blood to finish the ward; God heals her instead of allowing her martyrdom. Harrow also recognizes a small stone coffin aboard the shuttle, and sees the Body watching God from the pilot’s seat before vanishing.

Once the ramp closes, God confronts Mercymorn for forcing his departure. Mercymorn insists that the Mithraeum has gone silent, that only three Lyctors remain, and that she cannot confirm whether the third is alive. She argues that God must return, and although God worries about taking Harrow and Ianthe by the necessary route, Mercymorn wins. God has Harrow secure and bone-case the sword, then prepares the shuttle for launch.

After God gives a warlike farewell speech to the Erebos crew, the shuttle leaves the flagship. God explains that they are going to the Mithraeum through the River, a dangerous liminal space of ghosts where ordinary necromancers would be stripped of energy and soul. The blood ward will repel ghosts briefly, but Harrow and Ianthe must keep their minds and bodies joined or risk losing their souls; Mercymorn warns that an empty Lyctor body would be killed immediately. God has already begun submerging the shuttle, and as Harrow slows her breathing under her translucent hood, Ianthe cries out and Harrow sees the water.