Din, Tauri, and the Orbiis officers enter the altered forest following Ana’s map. They pass through an area filled with disorienting, dimensionally warped statues that the Orbiis call “teknasma.” The first landmark they find is the Hand of Gaddar, a colossal stone hand rising from the earth. Held within the hand is a human figure they first believe is a body, though it turns out to be part of the statue. Din translates an inscription carved into the figure’s chest: “Let the wayward mind bloom” (311)—a phrase that deeply unnerves Tauri, as it suggests the blooming of the web as it bursts from an infected skull.

The party soon discovers that a wide path has been intentionally cleared with chemical defoliants, leading them to the ruins of a Daljeni city, Naos-Minra. At the center of the ruins, they find a dry fountain. Jalin Burav is there, dead, having slit his own wrists. A test confirms he was not infected with the guiding web.

Nearby, the group discovers a small, hidden cabin that served as an Apothetikal laboratory. Inside, Din finds Burilis Burav’s 31-year-old journal, which chronicles his experiments and the process he used to create the agrarian guiding web from a substance he called qaytatin tuman.

Din delivers Burilis Burav’s journal to Ana, who quickly determines, with great disappointment, that it contains no mention of adapting the guiding web for humans. With Jalin dead and no new leads, the investigation feels stalled. Din meets with Commander Tauri, who is frustrated by their lack of progress but invites Din to join him for a soak at the local bathhouse.

Din first checks the canton jailhouse for Fotia, but learns from Seriv that she is away tracking down the former Burav drover Arthinio—the person who found Sagma Armenta’s body. Recalling Ana’s explicit warning not to get involved with Tauri, Din struggles with the decision but ultimately gives in to the temptation. He goes to the bathhouse and meets Tauri in a private chamber.

After his encounter with Tauri at the bathhouse, Din falls into an unusually deep sleep and experiences a vivid, strange dream. In the dream, he finds himself standing paralyzed in his room at the Green Drover tavern. He is completely unable to move his legs as a beautiful and unearthly song drifts in from the street below.

His augmented memories begin to stir, alerting him that this is not a normal dream. He recognizes the paralysis as a conditioned state, a symptom of infection by the guiding web. As this realization dawns on him, he sees a hazy, indistinct figure sitting on his bed watching him. Before he can comprehend more, he wakes up abruptly and in a panic in Tauri’s chambers. Urgently, he asks Tauri for testing paper. The test confirms that he is infected.

Din and Tauri rush to Ana, who deduces that the water at their inn, the Green Drover, must be contaminated. Subsequent tests reveal that the wells at the Drover and two other inns frequented by the gentry—the Prancing Calf and the Crooked Horn—have all been deliberately poisoned. After Tauri leaves, Ana chastises Din for becoming romantically involved with Tauri, who may be a suspect. She also explains that Din’s augmentations as an engraver make him resistant, but not immune, to the web’s control. She suggests that the killer has made a mistake by infecting Din, and that they will use this mistake to solve the case.

Soon after, Fotia returns. She has found the drover Arthinio, who confirmed that Sagma Armenta had hanged herself with a ribbon, not a rope. This specific detail is the final clue Ana needs, and she announces that she knows the identity of the second killer. To lure him out, she writes a letter to Velona Armenta, falsely claiming to possess incriminating evidence, and requests two lypi lances from Tauri to prepare a trap.

That night, custodi officers set up surveillance around the Green Drover. They capture a young man carrying a cat pipe, but Din recognizes that he is merely a decoy under the web’s influence. Realizing this was a diversion, Din rushes back into the tavern just as a song begins to play, instantly paralyzing him.

His augmented mind, personified by a memory of his dead mother, helps him fight the conditioning. Trikao Armenta climbs the stairs walks past the frozen Din, and prepares to kill Ana. Din struggles to move, slowly drawing his sword, but he is too slow. Just as Trikao raises his own sword, Ana appears in the hallway behind him. Having been unaffected by the song, she strikes Trikao with a lypi lance, causing him to shriek and collapse in agony. His helmet falls off as he hits the ground, and Din sees that he has plugged his ears with wax to prevent himself from hearing the song—suggesting that he himself is infected and conditioned.

Ana explains the full truth to a stunned Ippeas Armenta and Fotia: Ippeas’s father, Trikao Armenta, was the second killer and the mastermind behind the killings. His motive was to murder all of Velona Armenta’s children so that Ippeas would become the sole heir. The person who first discovered the web’s ability to control human beings was Jalin Burav, who used the web to murder Lyimo Armenta out of simple revenge for Lyimo’s personal cruelty toward him. Trikao witnessed this murder and blackmailed Jalin into becoming an accomplice in all the subsequent killings. Ana reveals that the unusual manner of Sagma Armenta’s death was the key clue: She hanged herself not with a rope but with a ribbon. Trikao had gifted her many fine ribbons, conditioning her to tie them around her neck, and he then used this conditioning to compel her to hang herself with the same type of ribbon. Ana also discloses that Trikao’s plan has already achieved its goal: Velona officially changed her will to make Ippeas the heir right after Castus died.

Later, Din visits the recovering Trikao and informs him that Ippeas, rejecting his father’s violent legacy, intends to sell off and dismantle the Armenta estate upon inheriting it. When Tauri questions how Ana resisted the conditioning, she lies and claims she used wax earplugs. Tauri arrives and asks about the investigation, and Ana reveals that they still don’t know where the web came from or why it works on people. However, she asks him to prepare for a trip into the forest, where she believes they will find answers.

Ana directs Din and Tauri back into the altered forest while she waits at the shrine of Master Gaddar. Near the fountain in Naos-Minra, they find a hidden pit that leads into a long tunnel. The tunnel opens into a vast, dark underground lake beneath the Touched Site. The water is teeming with the guiding web.

To their horror, they see dozens of desiccated, fungus-crowned corpses standing at the edge of the lake, endlessly stirring the water with long poles. The bottom of the lake is a mass grave, filled with countless human bones. When a series of strange tones echoes through the cavern, one of the corpses fills a stone cup with the infested water and begins walking directly toward them. Terrified, Din and Tauri flee back through the tunnel.

Outside, Din and Tauri realize the horrific truth: The ancient Daljen created the guiding web to turn common people into undead slaves for harvesting crops. Enraged, Tauri concludes that the Khanum —and by extension, Ana—must have been immune to their own creation. Enraged, he then points out that Ana seems to be immune to the guiding web. Accusing her of being a descendant of the Khanum, Tauri furiously abandons Din.

Din returns to Ana, who explains that the Daavir tribe destroyed the Daljen not for moral reasons, but because they pragmatically knew a slave state would eventually collapse. As they talk, Din wonders why the personification of his memories that helped him resist the web has taken the form of his dead mother. Ana makes a final, cryptic remark, implying she has met the emperor, who he resembles the Daljen statues and is a member of her family.