In Februa 1786, Helena works through extreme exhaustion in the Resistance hospital, using resonance to repair catastrophic battle injuries. She saves a badly wounded young recruit by regenerating lung tissue, repairing internal bleeding, and rebuilding a shattered chest, but the next patient dies when Helena’s strength fails. The loss, combined with the rows of burned and broken casualties, leaves Helena shaken and nearly collapsing.

Matron Pace urges Helena to rest, but Helena refuses because she fears more emergencies and cannot bear to sleep. Pace tells Helena that the Council is meeting and has requested the hospital report, so Helena takes the preliminary casualty numbers to the war room. There, General Althorne presents the battle as strategically promising, while Helena reports that casualty estimates are high and likely to rise.

Driven by desperation after seeing the hospital’s losses, Helena raises a proposal she had already submitted: allowing Resistance members to consent in advance to having their bodies reanimated after death as infantry to protect living soldiers. Falcon Matias condemns the suggestion as treason and religious desecration, while Ilva Holdfast rejects it as a violation of the Eternal Flame’s principles. When Helena argues that the Resistance is fighting the dead and losing the living, Jan Crowther silences her through the room’s acoustics, and Ilva dismisses Helena as hysterical while striking the outburst from the record.

Outside the war room, Helena breaks down. Soren finds her, moves her out of sight, and bluntly tells Helena that the Council would never accept necromancy, no matter how desperate the war becomes. Helena admits that she would sacrifice her soul if it could save everyone, but Soren warns that taking hope from Luc would be cruel, especially because Luc believes the recent battle may signal a turning point.

After Helena falls asleep in the corridor, Ilva summons her for a private meeting with Jan Crowther. Ilva admits what the public rhetoric denies: the Resistance is losing the war. Ilva and Crowther then reveal that Kaine Ferron, infamous for murdering Luc’s father and disappearing among the Undying, has offered to spy for the Resistance in exchange for a pardon and for Helena herself, both during and after the war.

Helena is stunned because Helena barely knew Ferron beyond academic rivalry, but Crowther frames the bargain as a chance to do whatever is necessary to win. Ilva insists Helena can refuse, yet the request is real, and Helena recognises that Ilva’s conscience is strained only because the price is so appalling. Believing the Resistance has no other option, Helena agrees; she will secretly meet Ferron twice weekly as liaison, pass intelligence to Crowther, conceal the arrangement from Luc and everyone else, and heal herself as needed to keep the secret.