Chapter 23

The narrator and Kaan arrive at a peaceful village settlement with Siharna and the others. When they discover that Siharna's daughter Korie is inconsolable without her deceased father's lullabies, Kaan offers to sing to her using Zior's lute. The narrator witnesses this tender moment and is overwhelmed by a resurfacing memory of leaving Kaan—triggering her Other and forcing her to flee the village.

The group descends the mountain burrows toward a settlement. The narrator obsesses over five iron pins embedded in Kaan's white robe—wounds meant for her that he absorbed. In the village, Siharna struggles with pregnancy fatigue and grief; her daughter Korie is inconsolable, unable to sleep without her deceased father Zior's lullabies. When Kaan learns this, he volunteers to play Zior's lute and sing to the child. The narrator watches from the doorway as Kaan, wounded and burdened, sits with Korie and sings in a beautiful baritone, tenderly putting her to sleep. This act triggers a buried memory: the narrator had once left Kaan, placing his málmr on his pillow with a paper lark containing unspoken love, believing this was the only way to protect him. Overwhelmed by the confluence of present tenderness and past abandonment, the narrator's Other begins to surface. She flees the village, scales the mountain stairs, and collapses in the snow, wrestling with resurging emotions and the realization that memories she'd hoped to ignore may be inescapable. She clutches Kaan's málmr, acknowledging that her carefully constructed emotional walls are crumbling.