The Monoist craft creates a fast-time enclosure around its collision with the Dawnsire. Within that borrowed interval, attackers and defenders fight before the stored impact catches up. Haliya protects Vondam through corridors built at the scale of a moving city. Alpharael loses comrades and certainty at the same pace. The holy death he requested becomes frightening once it is no longer abstract.
When defeat closes around him, Alpharael does not use sekhar to follow his sister. He throws the microvoid through Vondam's head and sacrifices his own hand to gain another fragment of life. The choice condemns his former faith and should still end in the collapse of the enclosure. Captain Slats instead lets him take a Hopelight fighter because someone who has finally chosen life deserves the chance to discover it.
Vondam survives the impossible wound. A prediction of his death, physical evidence and Haliya's memory all conflict with the living knight. He names the event an anstruth: proof that causality has been manipulated. Alpharael escapes toward Kavaron carrying the consequences, while Haliya and Vondam begin hunting the power that has decided both men must remain alive.