Content Warning: This section discusses wartime violence, the death of a loved one, grief, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The goddess Enva enters a café on Broad Street in the city of Oath and searches for “the door.” Enva has always been aware that her music would not keep the god Dacre asleep forever, but she does not have the same worries about the other gods (Alva, Mir, and Luz, which Divine Rivals revealed Enva likewise placed in an enchanted sleep): She has killed them to prevent Dacre from absorbing their magic. There is an ache in Enva’s bones from absorbing the magic herself.

Two weeks after the attack on Avalon Bluff, Iris Elizabeth Winnow walks down Broad Street in her home city of Oath and ignores the eerie feeling that someone is trailing her. She arrives at her workplace, the Inkridden Tribune, and speaks with Thea “Attie” Attwood about Roman Carver Kitt, Iris’s husband and their fellow war correspondent, who was declared missing after Dacre’s attack on Avalon. During the attack, Iris’s brother, Forest, dragged her forcefully away from the chaos, leaving a badly injured Roman behind. Iris reads the most recent letter from her and Attie’s hostess in Avalon, Marisol, who has survived the attack and escaped to the town of River Down, where she stays with her sister.