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After hours of work, Nomad completes schematics to modify existing engines to superheat water and expel steam as propellant. Exhausted but unwilling to sleep, he turns to Elegy, believing her soul bears a violent scar akin to his Torment, which forbids him from harming others while enabling Skips and Investiture feeding.

Reasoning that Beacon’s touch-based heat sharing reflects a world-specific mechanism for moving Investiture, Nomad attempts to siphon a trace of soul “scar tissue” into a drained sunheart. He tries generic Commands from other systems, but nothing happens. Rebeke, eavesdropping, enters when called.

Seeking a local key, Nomad asks about Beacon’s ritual prayers linked to heat transfer. Rebeke recites several, including one for taking heat from the dying. Nomad repeats and adapts the prayer while pressing the sunheart to Elegy, but the transfer still fails, suggesting sunhearts require solar bombardment and that he lacks the exact local method or medium.

With the mountain deadline approaching, Nomad deprioritizes experimentation and pushes to build a prototype of his steam-jet design. When he asks for fabrication, Rebeke explains their people themselves cannot make such parts—but their ancestors can—offering to introduce him to the “ghosts.”