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Raoden keeps coming back to the library because everything in it reminds him of Sarene — and because thinking about her is easier through her puzzle. He pursues the thread she pulled. Every Aon is built outward from a sketch of Arelon: coast across the top, Atad Mountains down the side, Lake Alonoe in the middle, often a line at the bottom for the Kalomo River that divides Arelon from Duladel. Aon Eno, the character for water, weaves the meanderings of the Aredel River into its body. Aon Dii, the character for wood, scatters the southern forests through its strokes. Some characters still baffle him: why an X cuts through the middle of Aon Mea over Eon Plantation, why Aon Rii is spattered with two dozen apparently random dots. The library may answer; he has not found those answers yet.

The Dor is now battering him at least twice a day. Each assault feels like it might be the last, and each leaves him slightly emptier when he wins free, as if his reserve were a finite well dripping a little lower with every fight. He works against a deadline he cannot measure.

Five days have passed since Sarene's exile when Galladon arrives in the new heavy-soled, nail-studded shoes Mareshe has just invented and gives him Ashe's latest report: the lords have at last agreed to move against King Telrii. Sarene has been sending the seon across the wall once a day for these dispatches and has stopped coming herself, presumably so Raoden cannot persuade her into anything; even the supply drops at night go through deliverers no Elantrian is allowed to see. He should be glad of any news. He is mostly tired. Galladon needles him for moping — it takes a finer pessimism than Raoden's to brood with respectability — and asks if there has been any AonDor progress. None. He has compared old maps against new and found no change; the basic three lines still want the same exact slant.

Then he says it aloud and stops mid-sentence. *Maybe none of the basic lines have changed — perhaps something needs to be added.* He has no new river, no new lake, no new mountain to offer. But there is one new mark on the land. When the Reod hit, the earth itself broke; the Chasm tore open across the south. Galladon is skeptical — they have always been told the earthquake was the Reod's consequence, not its cause — but Raoden turns the thought the other way around. If the quake came first, then in one instant every Aon in the world became invalid for want of a single missing stroke, AonDor fell silent, and Elantris with it.

He starts Aon Ehe again. His finger moves faster than he knew it could. At the end, below the three traditional opening lines, he sweeps a small new stroke across the bottom — a Chasm line. The Dor surges, and this time it strikes no wall. It pours through him as if a beast long jammed into too small a space had been released, almost joyful, and is gone, leaving him on his knees. His toe still burns; he is still an Elantrian; but the wall is down for good. Then a sound like fire. The completed Aon Ehe he had drawn warps in on itself, folds into a disk, and at its centre a red dot blooms and then erupts. A horizontal column of flame shoots over Galladon's ducked head into a bookshelf, immolates the structure, and showers burning pages across the room. Raoden, in wonder, observes that he has just destroyed the biology section.

They spend the rest of the day cleaning up and testing — and Galladon suggests they try things that do not involve fire. The next attempt is Aon Ashe with the new line. The character glows from the tip of the coast outward, lines reddening then settling into a soft white light. It works. But not the way the books promise. It is barely as bright as a lantern where it ought to fill the library; even with every power-boosting modifier Raoden knows, a second attempt is only marginally brighter. The Chasm line was clearly a large part of the answer. It is not all of it.

Galladon asks him to try a healing Aon, looking down at the splotches on his own dark arm. Raoden traces Aon Ien with every modifier, targets Galladon's body, adds the Chasm line. The character flashes and dies without effect. The cut on Galladon's elbow remains unchanged; his heart does not beat. The same failure as before the Chasm line, in fact — the Dor could find no target.

They go further down the list. They make a sheet of paper hover and then catch fire (linked Aons work). They turn a wall blue and then back again. Raoden converts a pile of charcoal into a few grains of corn. Encouraging — but any Aon aimed at either of their bodies fails completely. Their clothing is a valid target; their flesh is not. He breaks the tip off his own thumbnail and tries to make even that small chip float. The character flashes away. His best theory is the only one that fits: the Shaod left them frozen partway through their transformation, and whatever still pinches the Aons short of full power is also what holds the two of them short of becoming true Elantrians.

He turns to a denser diagram in one of the codices — a worked-over version of Aon Shao with so many modifiers stacked around it that the base Aon is almost incidental. He has to walk several steps to either side as he draws. The construction hangs in the air like a glowing wall, then gleams, then twists and wraps around him in a brief flare. Galladon yelps in surprise and cries that he has healed himself. He hasn't. He holds up his hands: still grey, still splotched. But the face that meets him in the polished plaque at the end of a bookshelf belongs to someone else — clear of mottling, free of the Shaod, not his own. The character did not target him. It targeted his shirt; the illusion is sewn onto cloth, not skin. It is, he tells Galladon quietly, a way out of Elantris.