The combined students move through tunnels that amplify isolation, anger and shame. Lluwen and Kirol struggle to say what their friendship means. Tam sees a white-robed figure in her reflection and treats the vision as another problem to suppress. Their private fractures give the darkness something to consume. Abigale's inklings shift rubble while Sanar's drumming and mage fires sustain the trapped group.
A daemogoth reveals itself as the pressure behind their hostility. It turns roots and stone against the group, pulling Lluwen toward a pit while offering power through despair. No individual spell is enough, but his friends refuse to release him even when he tells them to save themselves.
Fel arrives and converts the creature’s corruption into violent new life. The daemogoth recognises him and refers to an earlier offer; that accusation does not establish an accepted bargain. Fel denies the accusation, yet Lluwen’s report of an impossible snarl finally earns his attention and redirects the expedition toward Jadzi. The youngest-ever tenured Witherbloom professor, whose research linked life and death, had been found dead in his laboratory and returned thirteen months later with a spark and an unexplained hunger. He hopes to revisit the past to save a woman he loved; no completed rescue is shown.