Nassun and Schaffa’s monthlong journey to the transport station is uneventful. Nassun enjoys the time alone with Schaffa, and she decides to help him with the pain caused by his corestone by secretly feeding it some of her silver while he sleeps. She can only give him tiny amounts without making herself tired the next day, but it helps, and she feels proud to ease his suffering.

The station entrance is in the middle of a caldera that has been swallowed by a forest. They take Steel’s advice not to enter the forest at nighttime, and in the morning, Nassun is more clearly able to sense that the station is a deadciv ruin under the caldera, in what would have been the volcano’s magma chamber. She is astonished at how huge the city must have been, and Schaffa tells her that while he has not been to this ruin, he has been to others like it, and it was where the obelisks were made. He also explains the ruin was destroyed in the Shattering, which was akin to 100 Seasons all at once. Nassun wonders if he was alive back then, but he suspects not.