Yrene hurries to Hafiza with the surviving scroll, still shaken by the ransacking of Chaol's room and aware that someone is trying to stop their research. Hafiza lightly teases Yrene about Chaol's locket, but the mood turns serious when Yrene closes the workshop and explains the theft, the ruins near Aksara, and the theory that healers may have been deliberately established in Antica to oppose the Valg.

Hafiza is alarmed by Yrene's account of the Valg forces gathering in the north and by the possibility that healers have a specific role against them. Hafiza cannot read the scroll's language, but the markings remind her of ancient books locked in an iron cabinet. The books bear Wyrdmarks, and Hafiza reveals that her predecessor warned they were not meant for human eyes. Yrene suggests taking the scroll and books to Aelin Galathynius, who can read such marks, but Hafiza says she must consider the danger first.

Hafiza then shares a half-remembered history from her predecessor: before humans came to the southern continent, a Fae kingdom stood where Antica now stands. Its people built temples beyond the city and sealed their dead in thick, spellbound sarcophagi because they feared someone would take their bodies. Hafiza explains that the Fae left healing knowledge behind, that Kamala and the Torre inherited those teachings, and that the worship of Silba may have come from the same source. Yrene concludes that someone is now trying to erase this history.

After leaving the scroll with Hafiza, Yrene returns briefly to her room but cannot settle. Thinking about the link between Chaol's healing progress and the attacks, Yrene goes to the Womb, the Torre's quiet bathing chamber, hoping the place will help her untangle the truth.

In the Womb, Yrene finds her own bell among the bells of generations of healers. When Yrene rings it, the sound seems to guide Yrene through the chamber, awakening other bells and her own power. The ringing leads Yrene to an old, corroded bell marked with the name Yafa Towers, dated two hundred years earlier, revealing that a woman of Yrene's own family had once been a healer in the Torre.

The discovery helps Yrene understand the command to enter where she fears to tread. The answer is not merely inside Chaol's wound, but inside Yrene's own trauma and hatred. Yrene realizes the Valg darkness in Chaol has been feeding on pain much like her own old wound has sustained and consumed her. Accepting that Adarlan's people are not all her enemy, Yrene recognizes what the darkness is and rings Yafa Towers's bell in acknowledgment.