The chap­ter opens with Essun enter­ing a glit­ter­ing mica struc­ture in Castri­ma, the comm’s infir­mary, where she encoun­ters Anti­mo­ny, a stone eater who warns Hoa, anoth­er stone eater, to keep his dis­tance. The ten­sion between the two stone eaters is pal­pa­ble, but Essun ignores their stand­off and focus­es on Alabaster, her for­mer men­tor and lover, who lies severe­ly injured on a bed of cush­ions. His body is par­tial­ly pet­ri­fied, with stone replac­ing flesh, and Essun notices tooth marks on his arm, hint­ing at Antimony’s role in his con­di­tion. Their reunion is fraught with unspo­ken grief and unre­solved his­to­ry.

Alabaster and Essun exchange strained pleas­antries, reveal­ing the depth of their shared trau­ma. Essun con­fess­es to mar­ry­ing and hav­ing chil­dren, though her hus­band killed one of their oro­gene chil­dren, a loss that haunts her. Alabaster, in turn, admits he under­stands her mur­der of Corun­dum but can­not for­give it. Their con­ver­sa­tion is lay­ered with pain and res­ig­na­tion, under­scor­ing the emo­tion­al toll of their past actions. Essun declares her intent to kill her hus­band, pri­or­i­tiz­ing vengeance over rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, while Alabaster, despite his wounds, refus­es to seek ret­ri­bu­tion against her.

The dia­logue shifts to Alabaster prob­ing Essun’s abil­i­ties, ask­ing if she can now wield obelisks at will. He directs her atten­tion to a pink spinel blade, which momen­tar­i­ly mes­mer­izes her, con­firm­ing her con­nec­tion to the obelisks. Alabaster reveals he used the obelisks to tear a rift in the con­ti­nent, trig­ger­ing the cat­a­stroph­ic Fifth Sea­son, and admits this was delib­er­ate retal­i­a­tion against Yumenes. His rev­e­la­tion shocks Essun, who real­izes the full extent of his pow­er and the scale of his actions.

Alabaster’s final request is even more star­tling: he urges Essun not to fix the rift but to wors­en it. His demand under­scores his nihilis­tic world­view and his belief in the neces­si­ty of destruc­tion. Essun is left speech­less, grap­pling with the moral weight of his propo­si­tion and her own role in the unfold­ing cat­a­stro­phe. The chap­ter ends on a cliffhang­er, leav­ing her—and the reader—to pon­der the impli­ca­tions of Alabaster’s dev­as­tat­ing plan.