Helena receives a standard-issue alchemical knife and returns to the Outpost tenement instead of foraging because chimaeras have been spotted near the city. Ferron arrives late after their previous confrontation. Helena apologizes for provoking him, but Ferron says that when he required her to be willing, refusal was allowed; Helena doubts his sincerity but pretends to accept it.

Ferron inspects Helena’s knife and warns that, without training, she would be better served by a longer weapon. When Helena asks about the chimaeras, Ferron says several have died because they cannot tolerate the cold. He explains that the creatures are being made from accessible animals, including domestic animals, predators, and zoo specimens, and that the High Necromancer may feel misled about the project’s usefulness.

Over the next meetings, Ferron becomes distant and brief. He delivers information but does not resume Helena’s training, leaving Helena to report no progress to Crowther while feeling reduced to a messenger. Meanwhile, Helena trains other healers and works with Shiseo, her new lab assistant, but the added help only reminds Helena that her real assignment with Ferron is failing.

At a later meeting, Ferron is very late, and Helena falls asleep while sorting herbs after foraging. Ferron finally staggers in, bleeding heavily and missing his left arm after winning a duel against a pyromancer for command of a new district. Though Ferron insists his arm will grow back, Helena realizes that continuous blood loss is preventing regeneration from completing.

Helena treats Ferron under the cover of ordinary medical care while using resonance to constrict the damaged vessels. She senses the lumithium talisman in Ferron’s chest powering his regeneration, and once the bleeding stops, Ferron’s arm regrows rapidly. While examining his restored body, Helena notices how young and fragile he looks; Ferron wakes and mocks her, then takes offense when Helena says he looks scarcely grown. When Helena asks whether being made Undying was punishment, Ferron answers that immortality is what everyone wants.

Back at Headquarters, Helena is disturbed by seeing Ferron as vulnerable and human rather than only as an enemy. Lila finds Helena withdrawn and confronts her about the meeting she missed, which Soren has revealed to Lila. Helena admits the hospital’s shortages drove her to speak up, and Lila gently suggests that the hospital may be worse than the battlefield because Helena only sees the worst consequences of war.