After Elias stabs Asar, Elias twists the knife free and fights off Luce while Asar tries to recover. Asar is wounded and disoriented, so Elias overpowers Asar and shoves Asar toward the cliff’s edge, declaring that Asar would make a terrible king.

Mische runs after Asar without thinking, catches Asar’s hand while clinging to a ledge, and briefly holds on. Asar slips away and falls into the red depths of Psyche. Luce immediately dives after Asar, while Elias calmly offers Mische a bargain: help Elias return through Morthryn to the surface, and the queen may reward Mische with freedom.

Mische realizes that accepting Elias’s offer would abandon Asar. Instead, Mische tightens the magical anchor connecting Mische to Asar and lets go of the ledge, choosing to fall into Psyche after Asar despite the danger of Souleaters and wraiths.

Psyche engulfs Mische in memories. Mische relives childhood moments with Saescha, the joy of being chosen by Atroxus, and the sixteen-year-old ceremony that made Mische one of Atroxus’s offerings. In these memories, a firefinch and a shadowy figure appear as warnings, while the memories tempt Mische to remain in moments before pain, doubt, and disillusionment began.

Mische then relives the voyage into vampire lands, when Saescha warned the mission was a mistake but Mische insisted faith would protect them. The memory shifts again to Mische with the vampire soul Mische once meant to save, but Psyche reshapes the temptation into Asar, using desire and intimacy as bait. Mische notices the wrongness, remembers Asar’s warning, recognizes that Asar and Mische are being used against each other, and reaches awareness just as Asar also begins to wake before a violent force pulls Mische away.