After Dalila’s ceremony, Amina is locked in her quarters. She retrieves a hidden hank of her shorn hair, planning to sabotage the queen’s magic by secretly adding more to the royal wool supply. In the bath chamber, she is confronted by Raksh, wearing little but his old coral necklace and the queen’s magical belt. He behaves strangely, using magic to bar Amina’s exit and revealing he knows of her secret movements.

Amina accuses Raksh of being ensorcelled, pointing to his scattered memories and uncharacteristic behavior. He reveals that he is not the real Raksh but a magical construct woven from the true Raksh’s memories—partly him, but also rooted in Lab’s destructive aspect rather than chaos or ambition. The creature explains that the real Raksh is imprisoned but alive, having resisted Queen Lab’s attempts to extract his memories of Amina. The creature confirms that Lab plans for Dalila to be her next host.

When he demands to know how Amina is disrupting the kingdom’s magic, she refuses to answer and vows to kill Lab. A brutal fight erupts in the bath chamber. The construct possesses superhuman strength and shifts into a beastly form. After a destructive brawl, he attempts to drown Amina. She feigns death, then throws a lit candle at him. Covered in flammable bath oil, the fake Raksh is quickly incinerated, leaving only ash and his unblemished coral pendant. Amina hears a terrible scream echo through the palace and realizes Lab has sensed her creation’s demise. She gathers the pendant and her weapons and runs to find Dalila, fearing her friend is about to sacrifice herself.

Amina moves through a palace descending into chaos. Shrouded servants are in distress, and guards are actively searching for her. She finds Prince Pares alone in the throne room; the boy speaks Arabic and warns her that she has angered his mother.

Amina proceeds to a cottage in the gardens, where she is overcome by disorienting visions of the structure in various states of existence. Dalila appears and explains that Lab sent her here to weave through the night to deal with an “emergency”—Amina herself. Amina tries to rip the magical belt from Dalila’s waist but is thrown back by a magical force. Dalila, angered, removes the belt herself.

Amina confronts her friend about Lab’s soul-binding magic, but Dalila argues that such control might be what the world needs. She confesses that she made a deal with Lab to save Amina from the poison. Dalila lied to the queen, claiming that Sheikh Sasan had poisoned her, in order to get Lab to teach her how to seize another fate. The belt is the result—a powerful ward against poison and harm, woven for Amina. Amina refuses to wear it, unwilling to benefit from magic created through the suffering of others. As Dalila gives Amina Khayzur’s feather and urges her to escape, Queen Lab appears with her spindle.

Queen Lab reveals she has been observing their argument and is disappointed with Dalila. Lab realizes Dalila’s closeness with her was all a ruse to save Amina, though Dalila insists that she does believe in Lab’s vision. Amina tries to summon the peri Khayzur by putting her blood on his feather, but the magic of Khatti Ugal blocks the call. Amina attacks Lab, first with throwing knives that Lab stops with magic, then with her meteor blade. Lab uses enchanted tree roots to wrap around Amina and capture Dalila.

Lab interrogates Amina, who finally confesses she was sent by the peris to retrieve the dangerous spindle. Lab scoffs, claiming it is the peris who are the true danger. They lied to Amina about their noble intentions; it was the peris, along with the marid, who massacred Lab’s previous city. She confirms the real Raksh is in her dungeon and reveals she never intended to leave Khatti Ugal, as she will not abandon her son or the utopia she has created. As Lab threatens to torture Amina’s crew, Dalila, having chewed through her gag, intervenes.

Dalila pleads with Lab for mercy, claiming she truly intended to join her. As the queen leans in, seemingly moved, Dalila stabs her repeatedly with a hidden knife, mortally wounding her. Before she dies, Lab shoves the spindle into Dalila’s hands. Dalila screams as Lab’s essence violently possesses her body. The new Lab-Dalila entity magically paralyzes Amina, but the real Dalila briefly resurfaces, gasping, “Get Raksh,” and screaming, “RUN!” A blast of magic throws Amina clear, and she flees toward the dungeons.

The past and present timelines merge in the perspective of Lab, who is now inhabiting Dalila’s body. Lab is furious with Dalila’s spirit, which continues to fight fiercely for control. After subduing her new host’s consciousness, Lab takes stock of the situation. Her previous body is a withered corpse, and her sacred cottage has been destroyed.

Searching Dalila’s memories yields no information on how Amina disrupted her kingdom’s magic. However, Lab notices strands of Amina’s black hair scattered across the broken section of wattle wall the pirate was hurled through during the fight. A recalled memory from her construct—of seeing Amina standing contemplatively before a mirror—triggers the deduction: The pirate cut her hair to poison the wool supply. She rushes to her temple and finds her great fabric corrupted with dull, spreading patches. Lab understands that her enslaved textile workers must have knowingly helped Amina distribute the tainted fibers.

Mitanni arrives with news that the island’s magical boundaries have fallen and raiders—Amina’s crew—are in the harbor. Lab realizes that the boundaries have also fallen because of rebellious Khatti Ugalans abandoning their posts. She spots a look of triumph in a rebellious citizen’s eye. Enraged, Lab sets the man’s shroud on fire, then burns the entire workshop, including her centuries-old fabric. She sends Mitanni to protect Pares, then goes to confront the raiders, planning to use Dalila’s face to deceive them.

Amina reaches the dungeons, which are heavily guarded. The enslaved soldiers suddenly descend into chaos, and a rebel guard helps Amina defeat them by cutting off their magical shrouds. After they are victorious, the rebel guard wordlessly asks Amina to cut away his own shroud, and she grants him release from his servitude.

She finds the real Raksh in a cell, disemboweled and barely conscious. His innards have been replaced by glowing ribbons of magical energy, which Amina realizes are the ambitions and memories he has consumed from mortals. She shoves the magical entrails back into his body, but the wound does not close. Before stitching him up, she shakes out the few remaining strands of her hair still clinging to her sash—the rest having been dislodged during her brawls. Unwilling to use Dalila’s possibly cursed belt on him, she crudely stitches the gash shut using a strip of the sash and her meteor blade.

When he remains unconscious, she rouses him by offering him what he truly desires: a great story. She promises to let him make her a legend if he helps her. Raksh awakens, disoriented but restored. After Amina explains the situation, a cold, vindictive Raksh states that he knows how to defeat Lab. He agrees to help but warns that saving Dalila in the process may be impossible. Amina accepts the grim terms.

Amina and Raksh navigate the collapsing palace and rescue a young living Khatti Ugalan named Arno from a panicked mob. Arno reveals that pirates have been spotted in the harbor and that the queen has gone to confront them. From a tower, Amina sees her crew, led by her navigator Majed, approaching the shore in skiffs, where Lab, wearing Dalila’s body, awaits them. Arno shows them a secret path to the beach.

Raksh tells Amina to create a distraction while he prepares his magic. He also tells her that when the time comes, the spindle can only be destroyed with the combined power of demon and human. Raksh must first unravel its magic before Amina breaks it physically. Amina runs onto the beach, yelling at Majed to stay back, while Lab-Dalila feigns terror and claims Amina has gone insane. Lab lures Majed closer, then uses her magic to pull him from his boat.

Suddenly, Raksh appears, commanding an army of living shadows that swarm the beach. He confronts Lab, revealing a level of power Amina has never seen. Lab takes Majed hostage, but Raksh is unfazed and feeds a suggestion into Majed’s mind. Acting on his own trained thief’s skills—the same he had used before—Majed plucks the spindle from Lab’s pocket and tosses it toward Amina. In retaliation, Lab slits Majed’s throat.

Amina throws the spindle to Raksh and rushes to Majed. She presses her hand to his wound, gets Dalila’s magical belt around his hips, and secures it; the bleeding ceases and the wound knits closed. Meanwhile, Raksh wrestles with Lab, who tries to get the spindle from his hand. Their magical energies sparring, Raksh unravels the spindle’s magic with great effort. Drained of energy, Raksh throws the now-hollow spindle to Amina, who catches it and snaps it over her thigh.

As the spindle breaks, the world is violently remade. When the chaos subsides, the grand palace and city of Khatti Ugal vanish, replaced by untamed wilderness dotted with ancient ruins. Majed is alive and unharmed, but the magical belt he wore has crumbled to dust.

Amina finds Dalila, who is cradling the last remnants of Lab’s previous host as it disintegrates. Dalila is consumed with guilt, believing she is responsible for Majed’s death until Amina shows her that he is alive. Still despondent, Dalila insists on searching the ruins of the apothecary for anything that might still cure Amina’s poisoning. Amina looks for Pares’s shroud as she walks, hoping to return it to the place where his mother fell.

They traverse the ruins, finding fewer than 50 living survivors. Amina realizes that most of the other inhabitants of the island were the reanimated dead. Dalila finds what is left of her workshop and kneels beside a shallow grave that Majed has dug, burying the shrouds of Pares and Mitanni, finally found, with the rosary Lab had given her. On the return to the beach, Amina collapses from her injuries and exhaustion. When she awakens at the crew’s camp, she is shocked to see the Marawati fully repaired. Her shipmate Tinbu explains that eight months have passed for them; time flowed differently within Lab’s magical kingdom.

Over several days, Amina begins to recover. Dalila, now collaborating with the crew’s other healer, Jabril, develops a more effective antidote, and Amina’s symptoms finally recede for good. Amina offers Dalila the choice to leave with the crew or stay behind; Dalila agrees to come with them.

Raksh is unusually reticent around Amina. He approaches her once to return Khayzur’s lost feather, urging her to summon the peri “sooner rather than later” (471). That night, the stars become recognizable, confirming that the magical prison around the island is broken. Amina summons Khayzur and confronts him, having realized the “Third Transgression” was a person—Lab—and the peris sent her as an assassin. Khayzur begins to explain that he learned more about Lab after Amina’s departure and that Lab had been seeking peri and marid hosts, but Amina cuts him off before he can fully defend the council. Furious, Amina renounces her deal with the council. Khayzur warns that they consider her a Transgression, but she dismisses him. She then returns to her crew and announces they are going home.

Before they depart, Arno converts to Islam, while the other Khatti Ugalan survivors choose to remain on the island. The journey home takes another two difficult months. During this time, Amina fully heals from the poison, and she and Dalila slowly mend their friendship.

Dalila reveals that Lab’s memories come to her in dreams, and she has learned the enslaved textile workers knowingly aided Amina’s sabotage by ensuring the tainted strands ended up in every scrap of cloth they could reach. Finally feeling safe, Dalila tells Amina her true name and the story of her past: Her family and minority Christian community were massacred in a religiously motivated attack, and she was taken in as a child by the Banu Sasan.

The next morning, Tinbu reports that they have made contact with local fishermen and are only a day’s sail from Muscat, near Amina’s home in Oman. However, the fishermen also delivered devastating news: Ten years have passed in the outside world.