Talasyn dreams of herself at fourteen, fleeing watchmen through the towering city of Hornbill's Head on the Great Steppe after stealing food. In the dream, she reaches the city's west wall and sees a massive Night Empire stormship approaching on the horizon—a memory of the day Hornbill's Head was destroyed. She wakes from the dream to find herself amid the wreckage of her crashed wasp coracle on the far side of a glacial mountain lake from Frostplum. Smoke fills her lungs and her vessel is burning from a cracked aether heart. Across the lake, she can see the ruins of Frostplum and realizes the battle has shifted to ground warfare while she was unconscious.

Talasyn begins crossing the frozen lake toward Frostplum, navigating from ice floe to ice floe in bitter cold. Before she can reach the forested bank, tendrils of magical darkness—the Shadowgate—encircle her and trap her on the ice. She realizes the Night Empire's elite Shadowforged Legion has been deployed, meaning Frostplum is likely lost. A massive legionnaire emerges from the darkness, wielding a greatsword of pure shadow. Overcome by rage and desperate to survive, Talasyn unleashes the secret power the Amirante warned her to hide: the Lightweave. She blasts the giant legionnaire with raw golden radiance, cracking his armor and sending him crashing to the ice.

Talasyn summons a light-woven dagger and moves to finish the downed legionnaire, but before she can strike, a second Shadowforged warrior intercepts her blade with a war scythe. She recognizes him by his imperial chimera brooch as Alaric of House Ossinast—the Night Emperor's son and heir, Master of the Shadowforged Legion. Terror grips her, but she fights back with twin light daggers as Alaric drives her across the ice with relentless, overpowering skill. She cannot form a shield despite repeated attempts, and sustains several cuts from his shadow-spun blade.

At the edge of a floe, Talasyn improvises by reshaping her daggers into a morningstar flail, tangling its chain around Alaric's scythe. They end up face to face, weapons locked, both winded. Alaric speaks, revealing his surprise that Sardovia has a Lightweaver. Talasyn recalls how Alaric's father Gaheris destroyed the Lightweaver homeland of Sunstead eighteen years ago in the Cataclysm, killing all known Lightweavers. She declares that his father "missed one," then headbutts Alaric, stabs him through the shoulder with a reformed light dagger, and flees across the ice toward the trees without looking back.