Mische wakes in a cave in the Descent with fresh burns on her hands from the fire she used to save Asar. Asar silences her because the dead crave the living, then treats her wounds with a potion and Shadowborn magic. Mische notices that his magic affects her unusually strongly, and Asar observes that her body seems to respond as if it wants to return to its natural state, but Mische shuts down his mental probing and avoids the subject.

Outside the cave, Mische sees the Sanctum of Body: blood rivers, bone-like mountains, ruins, and enormous fungi growing through the landscape. Asar explains that this level is where the dead shed their physical forms and says they must find the temple at its center. When Mische worries about Chandra, Asar dismisses her fear and reveals that Chandra received forty extra years of life because of her affinity to Atroxus, implying she committed some grave crime long ago.

Before Asar can explain Chandra’s past, the group’s anchor jolts and distant screams erupt. Mische and Asar see Elias, Chandra, and Luce fleeing a mass of hungry dead toward the temple. Asar orders Mische to use her sword instead of burning herself further, and they run to join the others as the dead close in.

The reunited group fights through the corpses. Elias uses his sword, Chandra uses blinding Helianen light despite her terror, and Mische struggles with her own awkward swordwork and jealousy at Chandra’s easy command of sun magic. Mische hears a voice calling her name, hesitates, and is touched by one of the dead, which wounds and weakens her. Asar drives the creature back with darkness, forces Mische onward, then uses a powerful shadow spell to briefly disable the pursuing dead.

The group reaches the temple, where Asar opens the doors by bleeding into carvings of Alarus’s eyes. Inside, fungi overrun stained glass and marble, and Mische recognizes the place as spiritually potent, an inflection point where a god gave up part of himself. The group enters a circular chamber with a silver altar, but before Elias can approach it, a massive flaming bird with a golden skull face appears overhead: the supposedly dead third guardian dives to attack them.