Chapter Summaries

Klein returned safely from Bansy Harbor after rescuing two families, then learned that the harbor’s old name was Binsy and suspected a dangerous secret remained hidden there. Meanwhile, the Monarch of Decay contacted Bernadette to bargain for information about Agalito and maneuvered her toward investigating catastrophes and secret organizations.

• Klein returned Bishop Miller’s Beyonder Characteristic to Elland, who offered to imply that Klein was connected to MI9, and Klein stayed on guard until Bansy Harbor’s storm and fog cleared.
• Elland explained that Bansy Harbor had once been called Binsy, prompting Klein to suspect its hidden dangers were tied to its ancient past; Klein then accepted his reward and went to sleep.
• The Monarch of Decay boarded a ship for the Rorsted Archipelago and prayed to Bernadette, asking her for recent information about Agalito, the King of Immortality.
• Bernadette traced the prayer to a faceless Seer and agreed to gather intelligence on Agalito within a week, then asked the Monarch of Decay to fulfill one of her requests.
• The Monarch of Decay offered to cause a mass-casualty catastrophe, but Bernadette rejected the proposal and they continued their deal on her terms.
• The Monarch of Decay decided to use Bernadette’s investigation into the Black Emperor Wraith and secret organizations to influence her advancement ritual, while ruling out capturing Klein because of Azik and the Evernight Goddess.

Alger collected a Faceless mask from Sharf and passed along intelligence about suspected human trafficking in the Southern Continent. Meanwhile, the Outer Deity used wooden puppets to turn two pirate crews against each other, then questioned the surviving spirit and learned that Danitz had killed one of the Admiral of Blood’s subordinates.

• Alger inspected the silver Faceless mask Sharf had made, agreed to bring the payment, and learned that Sharf might leave Bayam for a business trip.
• Alger told Sharf about disappearances and suspected trafficking linked to Baelen, then left a report for Galan De.
• The Outer Deity’s passenger ship was threatened by two pirate ships, and He used a wooden figure to infiltrate their crews and make them mistake one another for enemies.
• The Red Skull Pirates and Black Blood Pirates fought until both ships sank, while the passenger ship escaped unharmed.
• The Outer Deity questioned Captain Johnson’s spirit, who reported cultist activity in Bansy Harbor and Danitz Dubois’s killing of Steel Maveti and several other subordinates.

The Monarch of Decay gathered pirate intelligence while Fors struggled with how much to reveal in a letter to Mr. Wente. Traynor discussed technology and the War Angel with Cosette, then learned he would have to serve as the Red Angel’s liaison.

• The Monarch of Decay questioned Johnson about the Admiral of Blood and Death’s treasure, then fed nearly a hundred souls to the Faceless Puppet.
• Fors asked Xio whether she should tell Mr. Wente about the Tarot Club, and Xio advised her to disguise details and warn him about the Beyonder world.
• Fors wrote a letter describing Backlund, Tarot Club transactions, Bansy Harbor, and her own progress, then tucked it away to send later.
• Traynor and Cosette discussed the facility’s limited technology, the Church of Steam and Machinery’s inventions, and possible porcelain profits.
• Traynor explained the Red Angel’s history to Cosette and revealed that he had been assigned to liaise with the angel, leaving him reluctant to return to work.

The Monarch of Decay found the dying Sea God Kalvetua and urged it to raise a great tsunami in exchange for salvation. Bernadette foresaw the disaster and set out for Bayam to investigate and try to prevent the coming destruction.

• Bernadette learned that the King of Immortality had left his island and gathered information about his possible routes.
• The Monarch of Decay sensed Kalvetua's decay near Rorsted Island and saw that its madness threatened tens of thousands of people.
• The Monarch of Decay followed the Faceless Puppet's interest to a plaza, severed worshippers' mystical connection to Kalvetua, and demanded payment from the sea god.
• Kalvetua offered its treasures, priests, and believers, but the Monarch of Decay told it to raise the greatest tsunami to be saved.
• Karat and Edmonton saw their holy sword shatter and a sudden storm strike, then ordered their followers to stop holding rituals and prayers.
• Bernadette foresaw Kalvetua's tsunami through her crystal ball and decided to go to Bayam.

Alger connected the World’s presence in Bayam to the brewing crisis around the dying Sea God Kalvetua, while Klein’s ominous dream and failed divination suggested Bayam remained in danger despite the Sea King’s intervention. The Monarch of Decay captured Agalito, remade him as a Demon, and sent the new King of Immortality toward Bayam aboard the Death Announcer.

• Alger learned that Laticia Dorella had entered Symeem Island’s jungle and concluded that the World’s presence in the Rorsted Archipelago marked an impending crisis.
• Klein recalled a dream of Bayam drowning in a storm, and his divination about Jahn Kottman defeating Kalvetua failed as dark clouds and lightning returned over the city.
• Bernadette observed the Sea King and Kalvetua clashing over Bayam before the Monarch of Decay tracked her ship and located the Death Announcer and Agalito.
• The Monarch of Decay seized Agalito, extracted his soul, reshaped his body, and used a Demon characteristic to create a new Agalito.
• Agalito ordered Second Mate Kircheis to sail the Death Announcer to Bayam and declared that his will was now the ship’s will.

As Bayam’s storm and rising tides worsened, Klein joined the search for Kalvetua while Agalito’s pirates attacked ships near the harbor. The tsunami struck Bayam, leaving Klein, Elland, and the city facing immediate disaster.

• Jahn Kottman struggled to suppress Kalvetua’s influence on the sea, then learned that Agalito and Bernadette’s ships had arrived near Bayam.
• Klein sent a letter to Azik, declined the snake-tailed messenger’s offer to evacuate him, and agreed to help Elland search for the Beyonders hiding in the city.
• Agalito ordered his crew to attack departing ships, while Bernadette protected her injured sailors; Agalito’s power killed them and his pirates boarded a passenger liner.
• Klein and Elland learned that Laticia and her companions had been found dead, and Klein glimpsed a Book of Calamity in Laticia’s remains.
• A tsunami rose from the sea and smashed into Bayam, prompting Elland to order an evacuation.

Gehrman and Danitz fled toward higher ground as Bayam was struck by a tsunami, while Alger encountered the roaming Faceless Puppet. At sea, Bernadette and Agalito fought over Roselle’s diary until their ships collided just as a colossal lightning strike descended over Bayam.

• Elland boarded a military airship with Klein’s information, but lightning briefly disabled the vessel before it resumed its flight toward the Storm Church.
• Klein summoned Azik’s messenger to relay a message, then led Danitz and nearby evacuees toward higher ground as another wave surged into Bayam.
• Alger spotted the Faceless Puppet outside his inn, ignored it, and watched it transform into a copy of him before it left.
• Bernadette and Agalito exchanged cannon fire, and Agalito read passages from Roselle’s diary that distracted Bernadette and revealed details about her parents.
• Agalito’s ship damaged Bernadette’s vessel, then charged into close combat; as the ships collided, a massive bolt of lightning descended over Bayam.

Klein used a risky sacrifice to draw Kalvetua into a Spirit World opening and entered its lair with the Snake-Tailed Demigod, where they killed the Sea God. The storm over Bayam stopped, but Kalvetua’s death unleashed enormous waves, and Agalito taunted Bernadette as the naval battle was swept apart.

• Agalito watched Kalvetua fall under Jahn Kottman’s attack and continued fighting Bernadette, promising to reveal how to read Roselle’s script only after she was dead.
• Klein divined that the Resistance Army and Bayam faced destruction, then received methods for reaching Kalvetua from Azik Eggers through the Snake-Tailed Demigod.
• Klein used Kalvetua’s prayer and a Spirit World sacrifice to lure it toward an abandoned warehouse, then summoned the Snake-Tailed Demigod and charged into its mouth.
• Klein and the Snake-Tailed Demigod killed Kalvetua in its underwater lair, ending the storm and triggering a catastrophic sea surge.
• The Sea King suppressed the waves near Bayam, while the tsunami scattered the ships and ended the battle; Agalito blamed the catastrophe on Bernadette.

Agalito escaped into the Spirit World after provoking Bernadette to choose between pursuing him and helping victims of the tsunami, while Klein survived Kalvetua’s rampage and recovered its newly formed Sealed Artifact. The chapter ended with Klein safely back in Bayam after sacrificing the artifact to Sefirah Castle.

• Agalito taunted Bernadette with the tsunami and escaped aboard the Death Announcer as a faceless puppet secretly boarded his ship.
• Bernadette ordered her crew to turn back and provide disaster relief, then realized a Saint of the Seer Pathway might have replaced Agalito.
• Agalito monitored Bernadette’s fate and set a course toward the Forsaken Land of the Gods, but discovered his connection to Kalvetua’s remaining characteristic had vanished.
• Alger helped survivors in Bayam and, shaken by their helplessness, questioned whether Mr. Fool could grant him the power he sought.
• Klein explored Kalvetua’s ruins, found a mural of the Elf King Soniathrym confronting the Ancient Sun God, and uncovered a golden cup labeled “Calamity, Cohinem.”
• Kalvetua’s Beyonder characteristics formed a powerful short staff that Klein sacrificed to Sefirah Castle before the Snake-Tailed Demigod carried him back to Bayam.

Edward analyzed Agalito's intelligence, considered the rivalries among the gods and the dangers surrounding Klein, then decided it was time to leave his hiding place. Klein examined the Sea God Scepter and used its believers' prayers to appear before Karat as the returned Sea God.

• Edward concluded that Klein had likely taken the contaminated Sea God characteristic, considered awakening Antigonus, and planned to leave before Evernight grew suspicious.
• Danitz returned to the inn and startled Klein, who resumed his ritual and examined the Sea God Scepter above the gray fog.
• Klein learned that the scepter could command the sea and answer prayers, but its effects could irritate its wielder, drain nearby creatures, overwhelm the spirit, and destroy the user's body and spirit.
• Klein decided to offer limited guidance to the Sea God's believers, recognizing that answering their prayers could help him digest the Faceless potion.
• Karat found Kalvetua's shattered statue in a jungle cave and despaired when the Sea God did not answer his prayers.
• Karat saw a majestic figure surrounded by waves and lightning, heard it declare, "I have returned," and wept with joy.

Amon wrestled with his fear that he had been shaped by the Outer Deity and struggled to find a life of his own. Medici urged him to seek challenges beyond other Amons, while Traynor arrived to join Medici’s work.

• Amon sorted books at the Municipal Library, confronted a hostile reflection of the Amon he had killed, and wondered whether the True Creator might recognize him as a possible original.
• Amon told Medici that he had taken the library worker’s identity and restored fates that the previous Amon had cruelly swapped among colleagues and the director.
• Medici argued that Amon needed his own goals and urged him to challenge the strong, even suggesting that he might someday challenge his original.
• Traynor arrived at Medici’s inn to join him, and Medici teased him about his Sauron family ties and his father’s reputation.

Agalito pursued his cover while profiting from a captured slave ship and studying Fors’s Tarot Club reports. Klein buried a dead girl in Bayam, then looked out over the city’s rebuilding after the tsunami.

• Traynor recognized Medici as his ancestor, explained his weak attachment to the Sauron Family, and turned to organizing personnel transfers.
• Kircheis found five hundred slaves aboard a captured ship, and Agalito awarded the pirates twenty percent of the spoils while arranging buyers for the survivors.
• Agalito disguised himself and traveled to a neutral island, where he read Fors’s reports and considered what they revealed about Klein, Mr. Hanged Man, and Fors.
• Agalito heard sailors gossip about the tsunami, pirate bounties, and Danitz, then instructed his crew to claim a higher offer for the slaves from the Numinous Episcopate.
• Klein carried the dead girl from beneath a bridge to a cemetery reserved for local natives and buried her after seeing Bayam’s harbor and damaged districts being rebuilt.

Klein roamed the Spirit World with the Snake-Tailed Demigod to search for a suitable messenger, encountering several strange and powerful creatures before the demigod reacted fearfully to a headless woman in a Gothic castle. Meanwhile, Edward visited the True Creator to promote Frank’s new spiritual honey bread and revealed that Frank’s failed roast-chicken-flavored apple was actually a chicken.

• Klein declined Azik’s offer to make the Snake-Tailed Demigod his messenger and asked the demigod to guide him through the Spirit World to find a willing creature.
• Klein encountered hostile and friendly Spirit World Creatures, but passed them by because they were unsuitable or impossible for him to perceive clearly.
• Klein and the Snake-Tailed Demigod passed the giant jellyfish in the ancient Elven ruins and saw a headless woman holding four identical heads, which frightened the demigod.
• Edward warned the True Creator that war was approaching and discussed how Medici could regain a stronger connection to his identity as the Red Angel.
• Edward gave the True Creator Frank’s Praise Biscuit, which restored spirituality and praised the Lord when infused with spirituality.
• Edward revealed that Frank’s failed Roast Chicken-Flavored Apple was actually a chicken that cheeped and bounced in his hand.

The True Creator examined Frank’s living apple experiment and considered buying the life-force transfer technology for farming, while Klein joined a gathering where a woman named Helene was being sought. Traynor learned that Helene had cut ties with her Intis family and might know a secret about Vice Admiral of Ailment, but told Turing to make her wait.

• Edward showed the True Creator an apple given chicken-like flesh and life by Frank’s experiment, and explained that the short-lived creature had no soul.
• The True Creator considered buying the technology to make familiars, and Edward suggested he could use it for farming if that was truly his goal.
• Klein attended a Beyonder gathering with Danitz, bought Ancient Wraith dust, and heard Ozil offer a reward for finding Helene without harming her.
• Turing told Traynor that Helene had repeatedly prayed to him, cut ties with her Intis family, and moved her parents overseas after learning he had left.
• Turing revealed that Helene had learned Vice Admiral of Ailment had a Saint-level relative, but Traynor told him to ask Helene to wait.

Traynor briefed Medici on the Demoness Sect, and Medici decided to seek out the Saint Demoness himself. Frank refused to sell his flawed technology to the Aurora Order but prepared improved wheat seeds for Richard Ernst; meanwhile, Edward began a bloody march through Balam, turning massacred villages into corpse monsters.

• Traynor explained the Sauron Family’s debts and his plan to let relatives fight over the tainted factories he had left behind.
• Medici dismissed the Iron and Blood Cross Order’s intelligence efforts and set out to negotiate with the Saint Demoness, ordering Traynor to have Raymond return to work.
• Frank rejected the Aurora Order’s offer for his technology, agreed to sell his wheat seeds to Richard Ernst, and hurried to check on Cattleya after hearing a disturbance above his laboratory.
• Edward’s paper passed into Cattleya’s cabin, where her mutations and ravings subsided as her spirit body vanished; Agalito then considered the Tarot Club’s growth and finalized the Numinous Episcopate’s purchase of the remaining slaves.
• Mirella asked Agalito about The Sunken Laurel and proposed a continuing partnership to redeem slaves, but Agalito refused.
• Edward entered a ruined Balam village, questioned a dead girl’s spirit, and gathered the dead into a monster that followed him toward more massacres.

Medici and Traynor set out to find Helene, while Klein organized a search for her and weighed how to approach the pirate admiral Tracy. Elsewhere, Edward reached a Southern Continent city and annihilated its population with a blood monster before destroying the local Storm Church.

• Medici told Traynor that someone was searching for Helene and arranged to meet him at sea in the Rorsted Archipelago; Traynor followed after Medici left without taking their ship.
• Klein learned of Helene's connection to Vice Admiral of Ailment Tracy and ordered the Sea God's followers to find and protect her, while deciding to locate her before taking further risks.
• Edward asked two mine workers for directions and continued toward a nearby city, disappearing from their sight as he traveled.
• Edward unleashed a mass of flesh that devoured the city's defenders and spread through the streets, killing more than eighty-five thousand people.
• Edward absorbed the blood and ghosts left behind, then smashed the city's Storm Church and departed.

Klein and Danitz tried to intercept Helene in Bayam so Klein could learn about Tracy and prepare to impersonate her. After Helene’s amulet summoned a dangerous monster and Klein subdued it, he questioned her, gathered intelligence, and let her go, while the hunt for Tracy remained ahead.

• Klein and Danitz spotted Nast’s ship, The Black Emperor, while traveling to Dilinus Harbor, where Medici and Traynor waited for Helene.
• Helene disguised herself as a young man and left the Intis consulate in Bayam, but Klein, disguised as a coachman, intercepted her.
• Helene summoned an Abyss creature with her amulet, and Klein fought it while Danitz restrained Helene.
• Klein questioned Helene about her habits and Tracy, then learned about Tracy’s abilities and cruelty.
• Klein gave Helene money and a ship ticket, and she left without revealing his plans to hunt Tracy.
• Klein watched Helene depart as Danitz struggled not to laugh, while the closing exchange revealed that Klein had transformed into a woman.

Traynor followed the bounty trail to Bayam and destroyed the Black Death while rescuing Tracy and Klein. He brought them to Medici, where Helene was expected to arrive and negotiations were about to begin.

• Traynor learned that someone had claimed the bounty for red-haired Helene and traced the claimant from Bayam to Private Port.
• Traynor flew to Bayam, found Vice Admiral of Ailment’s flagship, the Black Death, and collapsed a cliff onto it before attacking the surviving pirates.
• Traynor reached the captain’s quarters, discovered that the red-haired Helene was an impostor, and defeated Tracy after she lost an arm and tried to escape.
• Traynor found Tracy’s hidden mirror, pinned her with his sword, and carried her and Klein away as the Black Death sank in flames.
• Traynor brought Tracy and Klein to Medici, who identified the impostor as a likely Faceless and prepared to negotiate while Traynor rewrote his unfinished report.

Klein was captured by Medici after trying to escape, and the True Creator examined him through a vision, learning his identity and the secrets of his resurrection and Sefirah Castle. The True Creator warned Klein that he could resurrect once more, while Edward Vaughan challenged the True Creator over whether to protect him.

• Tracy named her mother as Katarina Pelle, and Traynor produced a marked bracelet recovered by Riel.
• Klein revealed Gehrman Sparrow's face, then escaped through the balcony toward Sefirah Castle, but Medici caught him by the collar.
• Medici recognized Klein behind his disguises and summoned the True Creator, who questioned Klein about his identity, awakening, Sefirah Castle, and past deaths.
• Klein revealed that he was Zhou Mingrui, had met Edward Vaughan, and had resurrected twice; the True Creator said he could resurrect once more and told him to use his life carefully.
• Edward confronted the True Creator, insisting he would help Klein if the True Creator tried to harm him, and urged him to strip Klein of Sefirah Castle and fate.

The True Creator chose to protect Klein and hinted that the place he sought was beneath his feet. Klein realized the world was Earth thousands of years in the future, lost control, and later woke from a dream in which he saw his old home and his present world.

• The Monarch of Decay questioned the True Creator about choosing Klein, and the True Creator said humanity could not wait any longer and he would protect him.
• The True Creator warned Klein through Medici that the place he sought was beneath his feet and told him to look at a world map.
• Klein recognized the map and concluded that he had not traveled between worlds but had been transported through time to a distant future Earth.
• Klein lost control as he grieved that he could never return to his parents, and two Mind Links stabilized him before Medici and Traynor arranged for Helene to watch over him.
• Zhou Mingrui dreamed of his old life, saw Backlund and familiar people as he fell through a strange gray world, then woke beside the map and realized he was crying.