Essun starts to feel at home in Castrima because she doesn’t have to hide that she is an orogene. She begins teaching the orogene children. She uses the same brutal techniques she did with Nassun and rationalizes that it is the only way to teach them a lot, quickly. Most of them hate her for it, but this doesn’t bother her if it means they survive.

Alabaster is irritated Essun is wasting her time with the children—partly because he doesn’t believe any of them have natural ability, but mostly because it is interfering with her own lessons. The Fulcrum techniques of energy redistribution that Essun is teaching the children are, by design, at odds with using magic. These techniques force the user to focus on their immediate surroundings and down into the Earth, rather than up and beyond. Alabaster argues that this is all part of the larger scheme of the Guardians. They are part of the faction in the war that wants to maintain the status quo, and orogenes who can use magic would disrupt the social order the Guardians desire. She and Alabaster theorize that what is implanted in the Guardians’ brains to give them power is part of Father Earth and that it can become contaminated, causing them to switch sides and do his bidding.