Ren, a seventeen-year-old thief's apprentice, picks a Kellmar six-pin lock to steal shipping contracts from merchant Aldren Coss under mentor Tik's silent watch.

Ren scouts the abandoned village of Thornfield solo for boneglass contamination, finding it clean after a methodical sweep of all forty-seven structures.

Malcolm's team meets Sarah Chen who reveals DataCorp's escalation ladder. New details plant mystery of RT consultation and someone above Hale in the hierarchy. Sniper attack forces escape to Aurora safe house.

Lily runs 14,218 probability simulations in the Holy Redeemer basement, discovering that 87.3% of timelines without Hope result in dimensional collapse within three years.

Wilson Hayes endures 23 days of arctic surveillance in Fort Resolution with partner Emily Jessup, hunting vampire James Wright with no results. The extreme cold actively fights against hunters while favoring vampires.

Traq wakes from three weeks in a medical coma after the Arcadia incident. His implant was surgically removed. He reunites with Oliver, Jim, and Adeline. They plan to head to Haven Station to gather intelligence about the approaching threat.

Weeks after Dominick's death, Haatim and Arthur cross-reference journals and archives in a safe house research room. A pattern emerges: the same ancient entity appears across multiple religious traditions under different names, and the Ninth Gate is pre-Christian.

Marcus responds to a major dimensional collapse at the Merchandise Mart where 200 people experience superposition across seven timelines. Hope, age five, walks calmly into the fractured space and stabilizes it with the ease of a child crossing a street.

Alexis Chen monitors from the orbital station seventeen months after Kate Morrison sealed the dimensional breach. Haunted by the absence and managing a skeptical budget committee, Alexis maintains her obsessive watch.