With Morrough away and many Undying absent, the Eternal Flame moves quickly on Ferron’s intelligence. Crowther has spread Ferron’s maps and tactical information through supposed alternate sources, and the Resistance attacks the East Island ports. Helena fears the intelligence may be a trap, but when the wounded flood the hospital, Helena has no time for guilt or speculation and works until healers begin collapsing from resonance burnout.

More than a day later, Helena learns the attack has succeeded: the Resistance has taken the ports and most of the East Island. The victory brings desperately needed medical supplies, but also reveals prisons of dissidents and a laboratory where Bennet’s people have been experimenting on humans as well as animals. The mutilated victims overwhelm the hospital staff, and Helena is left trying and failing to save them.

After weeks of counterattacks, extreme casualties, and exhaustion, the hospital finally stabilizes. Pace orders Helena out for several days of rest, and Helena returns to her old Martiday routine by foraging in the wetlands before checking the Outpost for messages from Ferron. Instead, Helena finds Ferron waiting there, gaunt, filthy, and corpse-like, barely able to stand.

Ferron explains that the High Necromancer blamed the loss of the ports on the commander in charge, and Helena realizes Ferron himself had recently been placed in that position. Since Ferron knowingly gave the Resistance the intelligence that ruined his own command, Helena reveals her hidden resonance to assess him. Ferron angrily confirms he had suspected her power, but Helena discovers his body is repeatedly dying and regenerating under the strain of his talisman.

When Helena removes Ferron’s clothing, Helena finds an active alchemical array carved into Ferron’s back, with lumithium-titanium alloy welded into his shoulder bones. Ferron says Bennet demanded the right to punish him after losing his lab, and the High Necromancer promised forgiveness if Ferron survives. Helena cannot heal the array, but she identifies infection, dead tissue, and a lethal contradiction: Ferron’s immortal regeneration keeps Ferron unchanged while the array tries to alchemise Ferron into eight imposed traits.

Helena puts Ferron to sleep by stimulating a point in his brain, cleans the infected wounds, removes dead tissue, applies a topical analgesic, and bandages Ferron as best Helena can. As Helena works, Helena realizes Ferron had deliberately enabled the Resistance victory and believed Helena knew he would be tortured for it. When Ferron wakes and tries to leave, Helena insists on daily care; Ferron reluctantly agrees to meet every evening at eight. Helena begins calling Ferron Kaine, and Kaine offers one more piece of intelligence: Bennet’s new lab is in a warehouse near the West Island shipyard.