Ferron continues escorting Helena to and from the courtyard each day, mocking her inability to find the light switches. The courtyard is cold and dull, and Helena grows increasingly determined to find any object sharp or strong enough to use as a weapon against herself before another transference session can happen. When Helena searches the house, necrothralls silently appear and watch her, while locked rooms and useless furnishings thwart her efforts.

During one search, Helena finds a hidden, unfinished portrait of Ferron as a boy with his parents. The painting shows Atreus Ferron as a harsh, imposing patriarch and Ferron as a gangly youth consciously imitating him. Ferron’s mother appears delicate and unlike him at first glance, though Helena notices that her features softened Ferron’s appearance; Helena is struck by the contrast between the dark-haired boy in the portrait and the pale iteration Ferron has become.

Two weeks later, Stroud examines Helena with Mandl present and announces that the brain inflammation has nearly gone down enough for monthly transference sessions. Helena learns for the first time that the previous session caused febrile seizures, and Stroud stresses exercise as protection against another collapse. Stroud then says Helena would have been useful for the breeding program because of her rare alchemical repertoire, but Helena reveals that Falcon Matias had her sterilised as a condition of becoming a healer in the city.

Stroud verifies Helena’s sterilisation and frames it as proof that Paladia reduced and exploited Helena just as it did other vivimancers. Stroud explains that the Eternal Flame’s hospitals identified potential vivimancers before birth, often prompting abandonment or coercion, and Mandl is named as one such abandoned child. Helena defends Luc, insisting he did not know the conditions imposed on her, but Mandl calls him a fool or puppet and hints that something was done to Luc’s body after his death before Stroud silences her.

After lunch, Ferron enters Helena’s room and violently restrains her with resonance, making Helena fear sexual assault. Instead, Ferron invades Helena’s mind, skimming her fantasies of killing him, her suicide attempts, her stolen newspaper, her encounter with Stroud, and especially her grief for Luc. Afterward, Ferron contemptuously says he has no desire to touch Helena and insults the value of Helena’s wartime healing, making Helena feel that even the one good thing she believed she had done may have only prolonged suffering.

Helena forces herself to ask whether Ferron killed Principate Apollo. Ferron admits that, though not officially credited, he murdered Apollo at the High Necromancer’s request in order to destabilise Paladia and help the Guild Assembly gain support. Ferron describes killing Apollo at the Institute by using vivimancy to reach into his chest and pull out his beating heart, then recalls being celebrated afterward by the High Necromancer and Ferron’s mother; Helena ends the exchange by telling Ferron he has done enough.