Mische, Asar, Elias, Chandra, and Luce flee through the mushroom-filled temple as the supposedly dead third guardian attacks them. The skull-faced bird wields Atroxus’s fire, burning Elias with unnatural flames and proving too large and powerful to fight by ordinary weapons.

Asar pushes Mische and Chandra to use Atroxus’s light against the guardian, while Asar and Elias try to distract it near the altar. Their combined assault hurts Mische and barely slows the creature, but Mische notices the guardian moves awkwardly and seems to be suffering. Asar explains the guardian died long ago, leading Mische to realize Atroxus has possessed the corpse and hidden the relic inside its body.

With the dead massing beyond the glass wall, Asar deliberately shatters the barrier and lets some corpses into the temple. The guardian instinctively dives to herd the dead, allowing Asar to bind it with shadow. Mische and Chandra rush close enough to pull Atroxus’s fire out of the guardian, freeing the trapped magic while the dead overrun the room.

Asar cuts into the weakened guardian, and Mische senses the creature’s grief and relief as it finally dies. Inside its body, Mische and Asar find a smooth black obsidian branch coated in luminous god-blood. Touching it throws them into a vision of a past meeting between a wounded god and Nyaxia, in which Nyaxia names herself after striking him with the branch.

As the dead overwhelm Elias and Chandra, Asar stores the branch and uses the blood-filled altar to raise an archway like the ones in Morthryn. Chandra and Elias escape through it first. When Mische tries to follow, the corpse of Eomin rises from the blood and clings to her, begging her to go home; Asar tears him away, and when Mische stops Asar from killing him, more dead nearly seize them before Asar drags Mische through the arch. They sink into darkness.