Isla cannot sleep and spends her days and nights in Oro’s library, searching for answers about Lightlark’s heart while rain and exhaustion blur time. Her thoughts repeatedly drift to Grim and their intimate time in the glass box, where they did not go further but rested together while watching the storm. Before leaving him, Isla made Grim promise to find Azul and bring him to her.

In the library, Oro notices Isla’s distraction but says nothing. Isla reminds herself that breaking the curses and winning the Centennial is now urgent because she is the only hope for herself, Terra, and the poisoned Celeste. She also thinks the heart could give her the power and future she has always wanted, possibly with Grim.

When Oro asks whether Isla has found anything, Isla admits she has not. Exhausted and unable to focus, Isla asks Oro to review what they know. Oro lists the facts: the heart is on Moon Isle, it contains Wildling, Sunling, and Nightshade power, it was used to create the curses, and it blooms where darkness meets light when needed.

The phrase where darkness meets light makes Isla reconsider their assumption. Instead of being only a location, it may also refer to a time: dawn or dusk. Isla suggests the heart may appear in a place where darkness meets light only during those transitional moments.

Oro realizes this would explain why he never found the heart despite searching Moon Isle for decades; as a cursed Sunling, he could not safely search near dawn or dusk, so he always looked later at night. Oro agrees Isla may be right, and his rare happiness makes Isla remember how Oro saved her in Vinderland by following the strange bird.

That memory gives Isla a second breakthrough. The bird had followed Isla every time she was on Moon Isle, and Isla had assumed it belonged to Cleo, but now she wonders whether it was trying to guide her. Isla tells Oro that she knows where the heart is.