The defenders broke Aclazotz’s attempt to restore the prison around the Inner Sun. Chimil’s light returned across the interior, and the bat god survived and hid aboard a ship sailing to Torrezon with his remaining faithful, still intending conquest rather than vanishing as a solved problem. The victory protected the Oltec but widened the conflict around them. Huatli's triumph came at a terrible price: Vito had killed her cousin Inti during the battle. She slew the transformed vampire by driving his own lance through his heart, but no act of revenge brought Inti back. Her grief makes the later argument against claiming the Oltec's rescue as an imperial conquest all the more difficult and necessary.
Funeral fires and repairs accompanied the first formal meetings. The Sun Empire arrived ready to speak of alliance, security and shared ancestry. Each term could support cooperation or conceal a demand. Huatli argued for restraint because mourning people should not have to negotiate their sovereignty under the shadow of foreign armies.
The Oltec retained agency over contact, even as isolation had become impossible. The discovery’s ethical measure would be set by what the surface powers did next: learn from a related civilisation, trade with it, defend it—or turn kinship into another flag planted over someone else’s home.