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Nomad is assigned a modest workshop in the city’s center, along with a compact hovercycle engine and the chained Elegy, whose ember burns from her chest. He observes her volatile strength and the single glowing mark on her cheek, noting her danger even restrained.

Contemplation explains the room once belonged to Elegy and recounts Elegy’s past as the city’s Lodestar—its navigator and visionary—insisting the Charred before them is no longer the woman they knew. Contemplation offers a ritual of trust by sharing heat; Nomad accepts, clarifying he is not the myth she believes, but he will serve their hope.

Turning to the engine, Nomad outlines the core problem: the fleet’s engines rely on air for thrust; at high altitude the thin air provides no reaction mass, so energy releases without useful motion. He infers the sunheart superheats intake air—perhaps to plasma—expelling it through nozzles for lift and thrust.

Comparing this to spaceflight, Nomad explains rockets bring their own propellant and oxidizer. Lacking such fuels on Canticle, he instead proposes using the abundant water and sunhearts’ intense heat to drive a boiler and produce steam jets—high-atmosphere rather than true spaceflight, but sufficient to cross the mountains.

The work stirs memories of Auxiliary and the Dawnshard: in a past crisis, the Dawnshard consumed Auxiliary’s Invested essence to empower Nomad, nearly destroying his friend. Burdened by guilt yet pressed by necessity, Nomad resolves to proceed and begins drafting schematics to adapt sunheart power into steam-based propulsion.