The chapter shifts to Alaric's perspective as he works with three fellow Shadowforged legionnaires—Sevraim and twin sisters Ileis and Nisene—to dismantle a remnant Light Sever on a cliff that once bordered Sunstead and the Hinterland. The Light Sever, left incompletely destroyed by earlier legionnaires, has resurfaced from deep underground. Alaric overrules the twins' suggestion to blast the cliff open with explosives, insisting that doing so could cause a landslide that would destroy a village at the base. This sparks a brief exchange in which Ileis notes his father wouldn't care about Sardovian villagers, and Alaric firmly asserts he is not his father.

A pigeon—an unusual messenger bird for Kesathese forces—arrives bearing a rolled message from a Sardovian turncoat. The message includes a map and intelligence offered as a "token of good faith" in exchange for clemency. Alaric reads the message, pockets the enclosed map, destroys the letter with shadow magic, and immediately departs in his wolf coracle, leaving the other three to finish the Sever and report to Emperor Gaheris at the Citadel without him.

As Alaric flies toward the Eversea and Nenavar, he reflects on the intelligence he's received: the Sardovian Lightweaver, now identified by name as Talasyn, has a half-day head start and is heading for the Dominion's Light Sever. He recognizes the enormous risk of entering Nenavar uninvited—it could provoke a diplomatic crisis—and knows his father will be furious that he acted without consultation. Yet he feels compelled to act, recalling how he let Talasyn escape at Frostplum out of a strange fascination with her fighting spirit, a decision that led to his father punishing him severely.

Alaric's inner monologue reveals the deeper history driving Kesath's war: Sunstead's Lightweavers attacked Kesath to steal stormship technology, killing his grandfather King Ozalus and plunging Gaheris into premature, grief-stricken rule. Alaric blames the Lightweavers for making his father into the man he became and for his mother's flight from the Continent. Though a flicker of doubt surfaces about Gaheris, Alaric suppresses it and reaffirms his loyalty, steeling himself for his mission: enter Nenavar, find Talasyn, and kill her before she reaches the Light Sever.