Word of the clash with Kellan reaches the citadel, and Tau is barred from the next skirmish. His scale loses without him. Tau vents his frustration in practice, and overwork, lack of sleep, and stress bring on a fever. Jayyed and Anan confine him to the infirmary for two days.

That night, Tau commits to a new path: time moves differently in Isihogo. He lets his soul slip into the underworld, where demons kill him. He returns in agony but alive, realizing he can compress years of combat experience into days by dying to demons repeatedly. The trauma erodes his mind: he hallucinates demons in daylight, nearly draws on a disoriented scale-mate, and stops bathing and shaving until his sword brothers force him to the baths. He dismisses the deterioration and continues.

The results are undeniable. When Jayyed pits Hadith, Yaw, Chinedu, and then Uduak against him, Tau defeats all four with little difficulty. Uduak remarks to Hadith that it is as if Tau has a demon inside him. The next skirmish is postponed as hedeni attacks intensify across the Wrist, killing nearly 500 Omehi soldiers and shifting the front lines.

When Scale Jayyed finally meets Scale Osinachi in the qualifying match for the Queen’s Melee, Tau leads a group to neutralize the opposing Enervator. They collide with three Indlovu attempting the same tactic. Tau drops two but chases the third into eight more. He fights all eight and badly wounds several before they bring him down. As they close in for the kill, the rest of Scale Jayyed arrives and drives them off. Tau loses consciousness.

Jayyed calls it luck but privately tells Anan he has never been more proud. Scale Jayyed qualifies for the Queen’s Melee—the first Ihashe scale in 23 cycles to do so. Tau skips the celebration and returns to the isikolo to train.

A moon cycle passes. Tau’s nightly deaths in Isihogo continue, and his sanity frays. Summoned by Aqondise Fanaka, Tau sees a demon’s face over the man’s features and nearly attacks. In the dignitary rooms, Zuri is waiting. When she swings at him in anger, Tau’s reflexes pin a dagger to her throat before he recognizes her. Appalled, she blasts him with enervation and is stunned when he recovers almost immediately instead of collapsing.

Zuri reveals her frustration, noting how she used one of her only visits home to see him and constantly fears losing him. They reconcile. She draws him a bath and shaves him; when the blade nears his throat, Tau flashes back to a demon killing him and freezes before letting her continue.

Afterward, Zuri asks about Isihogo. Tau admits he enters the underworld nightly—compressing combat experience he cannot gain otherwise. She is horrified, warning that repeated deaths will destroy his mind and begging him to stop. He refuses, insisting that it is the only way for him to get justice in a world that will not let them be together.

Zuri reveals the Omehi’s darkest secrets. The Gifted wield four powers: enervation, enragement, edification, and entreating, the last able to compel any reasoning creature through a shared soul-connection in Isihogo. The Omehi keep a dragon youngling chained and perpetually enervated beneath the Guardian Keep to force adults to answer when called. To summon a Guardian, six powerful Gifted form a Hex; the dragon inevitably kills one of them in a backlash. Their numbers are falling as hedeni attacks increase. Zuri reveals she is slated to become an Entreater—the role most exposed to backlash—and that her training has already begun.

Zuri sleeps. Tau stays awake until sunrise. Before he leaves, she asks him to find her at the Crags after the melee, then warns him that a “reckoning” is coming for the Omehi’s actions.

Days later, Abasi Odili arrives at the isikolo with his bodyguard Dejen and 18 Indlovu. Uduak grabs Tau’s wrist while Hadith steers him to the mess hall. After Tau tells the full story of his father’s death, Hadith sets the plan: Kill Kellan in the Melee, then challenge Odili to a blood-duel after graduation. He makes Tau swear on his father’s memory not to act while Odili is inside the isikolo walls.

That night, Tau secretly follows Odili’s convoy to the Crags, where they are joined by Champion Abshir Okar, KaEid Taia Oro, three hooded Gifted, and two Ingonyama. Taking a hidden climbing route, Tau gets above the group in time to witness a planned meeting with hedeni Warlord Achak with over 60 warriors.

Abshir presents Queen Tsiora’s peace terms: Achak’s son Kana will marry the queen and serve as co-regent, the Guardians will leave Xidda, and the queen will swear fealty to the hedeni ruler. As proof of good faith, the hedeni produce a tortured Gifted captive, Nsia, taken at Daba, and demonstrate their newfound power when a hedeni male Gifted enrages Kana—a capability the Omehi believed only their own Gifted women possessed. In response, one hooded Gifted steps forward—Jamilah, Jayyed’s estranged daughter—and enervates every visible Xiddeen warrior in a single wave. Nsia is returned, and the Omehi fulfill their terms by releasing Jamilah to the Xiddeen. Blindfolded and leashed, she is led away to teach them Omehi abilities.

Jayyed, who did not know his daughter was present until she revealed herself, tries to go after her and is restrained by an Ingonyama. Odili taunts him, framing the handover as the peace Jayyed always wanted. Achak warns that raids will continue until peace is confirmed a quarter moon after the Melee, preserving his chance to destroy the Omehi if his forces can break their defenses.

After all depart, the hedeni scout Tau had spotted finds him. Neither strikes. They back away and part without a word. Tau returns to the isikolo at sunrise, understanding the Omehi face extinction by defeat or absorption.

Back at training, Umqondisi Tabansi praises Tau’s skill. Hadith informs the scale that ranking in the top six for kills at the Melee makes any man an Ingonyama regardless of caste. That night, Tau enters Isihogo. He notes that the Melee is coming, and before peace can arrive, he must get his revenge on Kellan, Odili, and Dejen.