At dawn in Februa 1786, Helena reaches the upper floors of the Alchemy Tower after a hospital shift, still covered in dried blood. Luc, Soren, and Lila emerge, and Luc excitedly tells Helena that the Eternal Flame retook the trade district, putting the ports within reach by summer. Luc also reveals a new battlefield discovery: removing lumithium pieces from liches or Undying kills them and their necrothralls. Helena understands the strategic importance but cannot feel victorious after the casualties.

Luc invites Helena to celebrate, then at least to breakfast, but Soren silently warns Helena away. Remembering that her secret arrangement with Kaine Ferron must keep Helena distant from Luc, Helena refuses and claims she needs sleep. In Helena and Lila’s chaotic shared room, Helena removes the Holdfast Suncrest amulet Ilva gave Helena when Helena vowed herself as Luc’s healer, prompting Helena to remember the Toll: healing mortal wounds and reanimation spend the healer’s own life. Overwhelmed, Helena clenches the amulet until it cuts into Helena’s palm.

After waking with aching, bleeding hands, Helena learns she has been removed from hospital shifts for two days. Unwilling to be alone with her thoughts, Helena starts looking for tasks but encounters Jan Crowther near a mural of Orion Holdfast. Crowther takes Helena to his cluttered office and questions Helena about the Ferron family’s history, explaining their ancient iron-alchemy roots, their steel fortune, and their ouroboros-like dragon crest shaped to evoke the symbol for iron.

Crowther argues that Paladia’s old divine order has been weakened by technological and alchemical change: Holdfast fire and gold no longer seem singular beside Morrough’s immortality and the Ferrons’ industrial wealth. Crowther admits he serves the Eternal Flame only because he wants necromancers destroyed. Crowther says Kaine Ferron is not loyal to the Resistance; instead, Ferron is using the Eternal Flame to weaken Morrough until the Ferrons can claim power from the ruins. Ferron’s proof of usefulness was the lumithium weakness that has already helped Luc’s forces.

Crowther then reframes Helena’s liaison role as an offensive assignment. Because Ferron irrationally demanded access to Helena, Crowther interprets that desire as a weakness. Crowther orders Helena to visit Ferron twice weekly, deliver missives, study Ferron closely, discover Ferron’s vulnerabilities, and use Helena’s hidden vivimancy to make Ferron emotionally and physically enthralled. Afterward, Helena researches Ferron’s old student portrait and studies medicine and behavior, concluding that such manipulation may be theoretically possible only through subtle, gradual conditioning; if Ferron notices, Ferron will kill Helena.