Lift, a skilled thief, finds her­self dan­gling from a rope in Urithiru, attempt­ing to steal a bas­ket of food. Despite her exper­tise, she no longer feels the same thrill from steal­ing as she once did. She clings to the act out of habit, hat­ing change, and enjoys the pan­ic on her vic­tims’ faces when they dis­cov­er their food is gone. How­ev­er, their fond reac­tions when they real­ize it’s her ruin the expe­ri­ence, leav­ing her frus­trat­ed and con­flict­ed.

After suc­cess­ful­ly snatch­ing the bas­ket, Lift retreats into the hid­den tun­nels of Urithiru, where her spren com­pan­ion, Wyn­dle, awaits. The bas­ket con­tains food seem­ing­ly left out for her by a Horneater boy, which irri­tates her because it under­mines her self-image as a feared shad­ow. She grudg­ing­ly admits the food is good but feels humil­i­at­ed by the kind­ness. Wyn­dle, obliv­i­ous to her tur­moil, cheer­ful­ly com­ments on the boun­ty, fur­ther annoy­ing her.

As Lift nav­i­gates the tun­nels, she reflects on the eerie atmos­phere of Urithiru dur­ing the Ever­storm, sens­ing some­thing is wrong. She uses her abil­i­ties to slip through tight spaces, even­tu­al­ly reach­ing a small inter­sec­tion where she inspects her stolen goods. The dis­cov­ery of a jar of jam with a lov­ing sym­bol forces her to acknowl­edge the boy’s inten­tions, though she resists accept­ing his affec­tion. Her frus­tra­tion grows as she strug­gles to main­tain her iden­ti­ty as a mys­te­ri­ous thief.

Back at her nest, Lift vents her frus­tra­tions to Wyn­dle, insist­ing she should be feared, not liked. Wyndle’s attempts to engage in metaphor only irri­tate her fur­ther. Despite her com­plaints, she admits to lik­ing the tower’s hid­den pas­sages, which she con­sid­ers her domain. The chap­ter ends with Lift sur­round­ed by her stolen trea­sures, still grap­pling with her con­flict­ing emo­tions about change, iden­ti­ty, and the unex­pect­ed kind­ness of oth­ers.