Celaena remains in the gaming room after Chaol leaves and faces the silence around the pianoforte. She has not played since Nehemia died, and grief keeps her from pressing the keys. Celaena thinks of Sam and her other dead, but realizes Nehemia cannot be tucked away like the others because Nehemia’s murder and final words still haunt every part of Celaena’s life.

An hour later, Celaena reaches the hidden second staircase in the forgotten records hall. She has found The Walking Dead, memorized a Wyrdmark spell that opens locked doors, and proved that it works. The power frightens her, especially because it opens iron, but Celaena arms herself with Damaris and jeweled daggers and descends toward the sealed door.

Celaena uses the unlocking spell on the iron door and enters a dusty underground passage lined with numbered iron doors. The locked chambers resemble cells, though there is no blood or decay. She follows the corridor through successive locked end doors, each leading to another shorter passage, and realizes the structure is a spiraling labyrinth drawing her deeper underground.

Despite a worsening headache and a growing instinct to flee, Celaena continues to the center. There she finds a ruined hall, smashed beams, torn cloth, and a cell whose iron door has been broken outward from within. Inside are bones, broken chains, and claw-like gouges in stone and iron, revealing that something powerful and imprisoned escaped.

Celaena presses onward through the final portals and climbs a long staircase into a vast chamber of shimmering black stone veined with green. She recognizes the material from the rings worn by the king, Perrington, and Cain. When Celaena touches it, the stone harms her and seems to drain the light of the Eye of Elena; then a great metallic boom reveals her location: the clock tower.