The Compass initiates stay with Mistress Mika at her honjin lodging where she rewards them for saving her life. Overnight, she sings beautiful music and shares that others are awakening to something beyond their traditions. Authorities, however, are trying to stamp it down.
One of the adventurers has a dream encounter with a drah’acane named A’Vydal. He speaks of how they were made by a now deceased drah’acon named Zhertva. Torn of hope and purpose, they were mended anew when Kyoufu accepted and adopted them as his own. Now, they work to hasten their new master’s rebirth that will cover all Bacu in fire and death.
The following morning, Mika is able to have Norman freed, though his month-long “interrogation” has left him with amnesia. Before they leave the city of Suichuu, they go to a tavern frequented by coal miners called the Resting Pitch Face. There they get provisions and hear rumors of villages being attacked by Onryo: restless spirits who died carrying overwhelming rage, sorrow, or betrayal.
They set out southeast across a landscape where limestone hills, coastal plains, and forests of giant cedars jostle for space. As twilight nears, they come upon an abandoned village. But they soon realize the presence of an Onryo named Suki, and something else: gaunt, ever-hungry creatures who were once villagers, but now mere ravenous Gaki. The adventurers fend off the Gaki and put to rest the Onryo, Suki. Before she leaves, she describes giant monsters of red and blue passing through her village heading to the east.