Abzan authorities detained Narset and Elspeth while their own borders strained under war and evacuation. Ajani carried Sarkhan's warning to Khan Felothar and argued that holding the travellers served nobody. His intervention opened the road again. It also began to open Ajani himself. Elspeth did not excuse what he had done while compleated, but she refused the idea that the dead were honoured by adding his life to their number. There were people in front of him who still needed help.
Inside the nexus, Narset and Elspeth crossed from Tarkir into the Meditation Realm. The place resisted ordinary direction. Space folded according to expectation, reflecting each visitor's effort to impose a comprehensible shape upon it. Narset advanced by loosening that demand and listening to the realm on its own terms. The lesson echoed the healthier version of Tarkir's rebuilding: relationship required attention, not conquest.
Jace was waiting with Loot, the small Fomori whose mind held an instinctive map of planes and Omenpaths. He described his own recovery from phyresis as proof that damage could be partitioned and corrected. Yet Loot was subdued, exhausted and frightened. Jace had repeatedly entered the child's mind to navigate toward this hidden junction of worlds. When Narset asked whether Loot had agreed, Jace answered the practical need instead of the moral question. His proposed rescue of reality already depended on treating one vulnerable person as an instrument.