One night in the hollow tree, the narrator tells Lucía what happened in the “metallic woods.” The narrator and Circe had left the town and wandered for days in search of food, water, and shelter. They finally came across a strange building that looked like an old school. The narrator found books full of formulas and words she didn’t understand and a box of “useless” cell phones. The narrator’s mother had told her “how people had done everything on those screens” (135) before the “final blackout.” Some believed that countries had turned off their electricity to protect against an artificial intelligence that was trying to take over, but “nature finished things off with a new degree of devastation” (135). The narrator also found a few cans of food in the building and a notebook filled with entries beginning with measured “concern” and ending with “pure rage”: Words like “CHAOS” and “CATASTROPHE” written in red ink. The narrator built a fire and was about to sample the canned food when she heard men’s voices. She put out the fire, grabbed Circe, and hid under the bed. Eventually, the men left, and Circe and the narrator fell asleep in their hiding place. The next morning, they walked until they reached the metallic woods. In that “useless” and “infertile” place, the men found them again. Circe was gone exploring, and the men attacked the narrator and raped her. Circe appeared and attacked them, but there were too many to fight. They hit the narrator until she fainted, and the last thing she remembers seeing was Circe’s eyes. When she woke, the men had left her for dead. She could barely move for the pain, but she dragged herself along until she found Circe’s body. The narrator did not cry, but she hugged the cat’s body for hours and sang to her. When she could move, she carried the little body until she came to the bank of a dry river. She buried Circe beneath a tree with a single green leaf, digging in the hard ground until her fingers bled. Then, she sobbed over the grave until she fainted. When she woke again, the narrator dragged herself away. She doesn’t know how long she wandered across the “ravaged earth” until she reached the House of the Sacred Sisterhood.

In the hollow tree, Lucía tells the narrator that she dreamed of a place where the world was green and thriving. The narrator doesn’t believe her; everything outside the Sisterhood is “endless desert,” but Lucía insists that she also dreamed of the narrator before they met in the woods.

Returning to their cells at dawn, the narrator and Lucía always wear their veils to avoid detection, and one morning, they see a dead Diaphanous Spirit in the garden. Her white tunic has blood stains, and there are rope marks on her wrists. Her tongueless mouth is open, and there are wounds on her neck. A butterfly perches on the woman, and the narrator notices that its legs don’t burn her. Lucía lifts the Diaphanous Spirit’s tunic and sees blood running down her legs. They hurry inside, but later, the narrator sneaks back out to take the Diaphanous Spirit’s sacred crystal.

In the Chapel of Ascension, the women learn that a Diaphanous Spirit has “left for the intangible dimension” (146). The women must mourn her through silence and fasting, each confined to her own room. The narrator has endless time to write, but she can think of nothing but Lucía. The narrator wonders who injured the Diaphanous Spirit’s body and who killed her and the Minor Saint. After three days without food or water, the women are let out of their cells. They eye one another suspiciously over breakfast, all except Lourdes, who is “radiant.” Despite her confinement, she has managed to spread a rumor that Lucía used “dark, ancestral magic” (149) against the Diaphanous Spirit. Lucía is “unperturbed,” but the narrator is “perturbed” and goes in search of amanitas.

That night, the narrator adds the amanita to cricket flour to make a bread and leaves it on Lourdes’s pillow. Lourdes removes her clothes and dances naked in the garden, looking surprisingly beautiful now that she isn’t “plotting.” She laughs and dances, then screams up at the moon. She hugs Lucía, calling her the “witch of the night” over and over until Lucía walks her to her cell as the narrator marvels at the woman’s “capacity for mercy” (151). Later, Lucía and the narrator sneak out to the woods. They are in their hollow tree when they see Lourdes and the “colossal” figure of the Superior Sister moving through the trees. The Superior Sister beats Lourdes with a branch, then begins to strangle her. With their veils drawn to conceal their identities, Lucía and the narrator attack the Sacred Sister with branches. They leave her on the ground and take Lourdes back to her cell, but in the morning, Lourdes’s body is hanging from a tree on the edge of the woods. The narrator is surprised at the depth of her emotion, given that she didn’t like Lourdes. Instead of breakfast, the unworthy are given instructions to gather in the Chapel of Ascension, and the narrator knows that the Superior Sister will “seek revenge.”

In the Chapel of Ascension, the assembled women wait in a silence so “total” that the narrator doesn’t even think of the scene with Lourdes in the woods. When the increasingly frail María de las Soledades coughs, she shuffles forward automatically to accept her punishment from the Superior Sister, who is armed with a whip. She orders María de las Soledades to go to the Tower of Silence, and María de las Soledades accepts her punishment with such “indifference” that the Superior Sister loses control and begins screaming at the unworthy. She marches up and down the rows of women and extracts two of them: Catalina, who lowers her gaze when the Superior Sister passes, and Élida, who has dirt stains on her tunic. When the remaining women are seated again, He speaks to them from behind the screen, claiming that Lourdes “conspired to trap a Diaphanous Spirit in the intangible dimension” (157). As he speaks, the narrator surreptitiously touches Lucía’s hand to “calm her.” However, when he announces that one of the unworthy will become Enlightened, she looks at Lucía and sees her terror reflected in the other woman’s eyes.

That night, the women hear Catalina and Élida screaming. Some servants whisper that the Superior Sister locked them in cages and forced them to live like dogs. Others say that they are dead.

For three days, the women don’t know who the new Enlightened is. Lucía and the narrator meet in the woods and take down Lourdes’s body, even though they know it is dangerous. They dig her a grave and bury her among the trees. As they work, the narrator is grateful that Lucía never mentions the narrator’s responsibility for Lourdes’s death. Once the burial is done, they bathe and clean their clothing in the Creek of Madness, kissing one another and telling each other their “real names.” At dawn, they return to their cells. Lucía tells the narrator that she wants to save María de las Soledades from the Tower of Silence, and she doesn’t want to become Enlightened and leave the narrator behind.

Instead of breakfast, the narrator and Lucía offer to tend the crops with a Diaphanous Spirit so that their tunics can dry. The narrator is surprised to see the plants looking so strong, and there is a bee among the crops, making her wonder “whether the world outside the House of the Sacred Sisterhood was beginning to recover” (162). Meanwhile, inside, the Superior Sister inspects the unworthy’s nails to see who buried Lourdes. Eventually, she accuses “one of Lourdes’s weaklings” (163) and imparts the “minor punishment” of lying on broken glass.

After three days, the narrator and Lucía finally have an opportunity to rescue María de las Soledades. They pick the lock to the Tower of Silence as a vulture circles overhead. They haven’t seen one in many years and “rejoice” at its presence, even though it is waiting for María de las Soledades to die. The chamber at the top of the tower reeks of “decay,” and they must walk over the bones of Chosen to reach María de las Soledades. They wet her lips with some water, but there is no recognition in the dying woman’s eyes, and she stops breathing in the narrator’s arms. She is filled with regret for not helping her sooner, and Lucía holds her hands as she cries. The vulture continues circling, but Lucía looks frightened and insists that it is one of the dead monks waiting for them to fall from the tower.

The unworthy gather in the Chapel of Ascension for the announcement of the new Enlightened, and Lucía and the narrator hold hands under their tunic. The Minor Saints sing the Hymn of the Enlightened while a “mutilated” Full Aura “trie[s] to imitate dancing” (168). When Lucía is announced as the new Enlightened, the narrator doesn’t cry, but she feels like “red sand is gathering in [her] blood, accumulating in [her] throat” (166). She is kept under guard, so they cannot sneak to the woods to say goodbye, and the narrator can do nothing but write “useless words […] that can’t open the carved black door” to the Refuge of the Enlightened” (166). For eight days, the narrator hears screams coming from behind the door and resolves to rescue Lucía.

The narrator sneaks out one night and waits in an empty cell beside the door to the Refuge of the Enlightened. There are two cages in the room covered with blankets, and the narrator thinks she can hear a crying sound coming from them. She thinks of Catalina and Élida, but she is determined to stay focused on Lucía. When she is sure the coast is clear, she picks the lock just enough to understand how the mechanism works. The next night, she returns, unlocks the door with ease, and discovers “the cogs of the lie” (172). The Enlightened’s wombs are “bursting with vice,” proof “that He was profaning them” (172). The narrator finds Lucía being raped by “Him” as the Superior Sister watches. She stifles a scream and stabs the Superior Sister, then hits her hard enough to knock her down. The naked man tries to attack her, and some of the Enlightened help the Superior Sister up. The Superior sister stabs the narrator in the stomach, but she and Lucía escape. Some of the Enlightened continue trying to help the Superior Sister, some are confused, and some rush to escape with Lucía and the narrator. As they leave, the narrator jams her quill into the lock, temporarily trapping their pursuers inside.

The narrator instructs Lucía to leave her in the hollow of their tree and escape with the others, showing her the wound in her stomach and insisting she won’t make it. Lucía hugs and kisses her, crying, and says “three words” that are “a vibration of fire” (174) before leaving. The narrator knows she has little time, and she writes furiously. She is unsure if it is the fabric staunching her blood or “the will to tell this story” (173) that is keeping her alive. There, in the “living cathedral” of the woods, the narrator plans to leave the pages she has protected so carefully. Maybe they will be found and read, or maybe they will return to the earth. When she hears the bells that announce the hunt for her, she will use a stone to widen the wound in her stomach, letting her blood spill so “the earth will receive it, absorb and transform it” (172).