They arrive at ruined Charbourg, finding the land shattered by five immense, glowing fissures. Gabriel recounts drinking a few drops of Dior’s blood in León and seeing a waking dream of a great hand above the Zamesk peaks tearing the sun from the sky; the five fissures relate to the five ancient bloodlines. The terrain became too treacherous for horses; Gabriel bid farewell to Argent. At the city’s edge, they encounter Nicolette Chastain fleeing with her thralls. She informs them Voss arrived three days ago, Dior is alive, and Baptiste was alive only hours before. Voss knows they are coming. Despite the trap lying in wait for them, they let Nicolette go and run through the ash toward a final confrontation.

Following Dior’s blood scent, they enter a ruined cathedral to find a re-creation of the Redeemer’s execution, Dior nailed to a wheel upon a dais, a crown of thorns on her head. Voss presides the scene while Morgane holds Patience. Gabriel attacks Voss, but his greatsword shatters on Voss’s skin. Though Gabriel injures Voss, the Forever King stabs and beats him. 

Aaron steps into the fight, slices Dior’s thigh to coat the broken blade Epitaph in her blood, and finally slices through Voss’s palm and sets his hand ablaze. Voss plunged his burning arm into the cathedral sand. As Aaron moves to finish him, Baptiste steps between them, pleading not to be spared but to be turned so they can stay together forever. Aaron refuses, demanding Baptiste kill him instead, then smashes Baptiste’s blade aside and wraps his husband’s hand around Epitaph’s haft, turning it toward his own heart. Baptiste’s hand falls from the hilt, and Voss rises and shoves, driving Baptiste’s chest onto the blade so it bursts through him and into Aaron’s heart. Aaron and Baptiste die together in the flames. Voss seizes the defeated Gabriel.

Gabriel awakens in the ruined cathedral, realizing it is the origin point of daysdeath. Voss reveals his plan to make Gabriel a Prince of Forever, his chosen son. To perform the ritual, Voss slits Dior’s throat to bring the stone bowl beneath the wheel to brimming with her holy blood. He pins Gabriel’s wrists, forced his face into the bowl, and forces Gabriel to drink while chanting a spell. However, the ritual fails. Even as power from Dior’s blood floods Gabriel, his heart continues to beat. 

Enraged, Voss screams he was promised this outcome by his dark master. Morgane laughs, declaring their lord has deceived him. With the world already ruined, Voss’s service is no longer required. Enraged, Voss rips out Morgane’s heart, instantly turning her to dust. Celene appears, wounds Voss with her blade, and declares his judgment has come.

Celene and Gabriel recount their final battle with Voss. Healed by Dior’s blood, Gabriel joins her, plunging the broken Ashdrinker into the bowl of Dior’s collected blood. The siblings attack Voss together, and a barely conscious Dior wills the congealed blood around the nails in her palms into needles. Voss sees them coming through Celene’s mind and twists aside so the needles miss, but in that distracted moment Gabriel strikes. Celene bites Voss, draining his power, just as Gabriel drives the holy blood-coated blade into his heart, killing him.

Celene shoves Patience away as she loses herself feeding from Voss. Voss explodes, the blast flinging them both; Patience falls into the bowl of holy blood and burns. Celene tears off her coat trying to smother the flames, but they spread to her, leaving her arms charred to nothing and herself nearly blind. Dior crawls to the crushed Gabriel and offers her wrist; spurred by her pleas and a final message from Ashdrinker, Gabriel drinks but cannot stop, draining the last Redeemer and breaking the Grail. Nicolette captures the comatose Gabriel. In the present, the interview concludes, and Jean-François has them prepared for execution.

Jean-François presents his history to Margot. She is pleased, seeing a political tool to turn the other vampire lines against Voss. Preparing for the execution, he encounters Kestrel, who inadvertently reveals Patience has been dead for four years, contrary to Gabriel’s story. Realizing he has been lied to, Jean-François rushes to his chambers, where a recurring white moth leads him to suspect a conspiracy involving Dior. He confronts Dario, who suddenly attacks him with a silversteel dagger. Jean-François deduces that anyone who had drunk Dior’s blood was immune to thralldom, and identifies Dario as none other Joaquin Marenn. Joaquin leaves him wounded with a cryptic message.

Realizing the stories were deception, Jean-François rushes to the execution, a staged duel between the siblings before Margot and the assembled bloodlines. The fight is a distraction; as a Highlander army and beasts led by Phoebe attacks Sul Adair, Dior materializes from a swarm of moths in her wolf form. After Margot’s wolves wound her, Dior’s blood is revealed lethal to vampires. She shakes it across the hall, incinerating countless guests, tears off Margot’s head, sets Kestrel ablaze with bloody needles, and kills Kariim by bursting him to ashes in her jaws; the Draigann is seized and shaken apart separately.

Jean-François is found in hiding. Gabriel reveals their entire narrative was a ruse to gather the vampire elders, their true goal being to spill the blood of the eldest of the Five Lines and undo the Forever King’s curse. He admits his friends survived. Nicolette is executed by Celene. As punishment, Gabriel spares Jean-François but throws him across the enchanted river in Celene’s old cell, trapping him there forever.

Twenty-seven years into daysdeath, Gabriel waits in the murdered Forever King’s fortress. He is joined by Phoebe, and they prepare to leave for the Moonsthrone. He is reunited with his friends. Lachlan asks Gabriel to be godfather to his and Charli’s child. Aaron and Baptiste announce their decision to stay and rebuild Sul Adair. Gabriel shares an emotional reunion with Dior and learns her separation from Reyne was a ruse.

Despite victory, despair looms as the sky remains dark. Hope is restored when Celene arrives and demonstrates the sun is growing brighter. She holds out her hand, and her immortal flesh begins to smoke, proving daysdeath is ending. Surrounded by Dior, Phoebe, and his found family, Gabriel finds peace, accepting he has the patience to wait for the new dawn.