After Kaine saves the rescue party, Helena pulls away from their kiss because she must tend the others. Kaine tells Helena the route to an upper floodgate and urges Helena to use the ring if she needs him, but Helena cannot promise because Kaine remains Crowther’s spy and asset. Kaine leaves with his necrothralls before Helena wakes Sebastian.

Helena and Sebastian stabilize the surviving team. Sebastian realizes Helena used necromancy and reanimated Soren, but agrees to claim they moved everyone together. Alister wakes near burnout, Penny’s maimed leg is made usable, Wagner remains unhurt, and Luc wakes screaming with a severe fever. The group escapes through the tunnels, contacts Headquarters, breaks through a floodgate, and is recovered by General Althorne’s boat. At Headquarters, the injured are sent to the hospital, Wagner is imprisoned, and Helena and Sebastian are confined for disobeying orders.

Helena expects punishment for necromancy, but Elain summons Helena to the hospital because Luc’s organs are poisoned and his fever cannot be controlled. Luc is delirious and violent until Helena reaches him, but when Helena tries to examine him, Luc throws Helena across the room and suddenly accuses Helena of using necromancy on Soren. Helena apologizes but cannot explain that Soren had already been dying and asked her to do it. Luc orders Helena out, then calms only when Lila arrives and proves she is alive.

Ilva tells Helena that the official account will deny the necromancy: Luc is too delirious to be trusted, the others state Soren died protecting them, and Sebastian corroborates a heroic rescue story. Helena is spared public trial for the sake of the Resistance narrative, placed off duty, and told to stay out of sight. Alone afterward, Helena experiences Soren’s postmortem memories as if they are her own, realizing that her necromantic tether left part of Soren’s death inside her mind.

Overwhelmed by the memories, Ascendance, cold, and shock, Helena nearly harms herself and wanders toward the Outpost to find Kaine, then turns back because seeking him there would endanger his cover. Kaine finds Helena collapsed outside with a giant winged wolf and carries Helena away. Kaine explains that Helena put part of herself into Soren’s reanimation and lost that part when Soren was destroyed, leaving a scar that animancy can help ground.

Kaine takes Helena to a high, private residence and tends to Helena through shock. Helena admits Helena does not want to be alone but fears caring for Kaine will make Helena unable to use Kaine as the Resistance’s hope. Kaine insists Helena does not have to push him away, and the two share a tender, consensual intimacy that contrasts with Helena’s earlier guilt and trauma. Afterward, Kaine holds Helena, and they speak softly about how closely they have memorized each other.