Alptraum is troubled by more bizarre dreams; he sees the "Sea of Souls", but minus the "sea": just a barren, empty, lifeless expanse. He sees the Crossroads of the Seven Sisters. He sees the dream-Mount-Sunala – but there is nobody there. He returns to the Sea of Souls to find that it fills up again, and then he seeks out the spirit of Autumn-Storm's lost "love" … and suffers through an experience whereby he relives a moment from Autumn-Storm's perspective that suggests that her "lost love" wasn't all that lovely. After that, he has another bizarre, surreal experience, full of conflicting imagery, based around the song that he heard as a child.

When Alptraum awakes, he and Autumn-Storm head out, and encounter the servant of a Gallisian chevalier. They avoid the servant, moving along, and then find some corpses – victims of the "blood beast". They encounter a chevalier, Pierre DuValle, and when Alptraum mentions that he is on a quest for Duchess Eve Kurai, the chevalier takes issue with calling her a "duchess" – and Alptraum takes issue with the chevalier. Harsh words are exchanged, and Alptraum flees while the chevalier resorts to using a crossbow; Autumn-Storm throws off the poodle's aim by running up to his drokar, and when Alptraum emerges from the trees, he finds both chevaliar and cheetah gone.

Alptraum tracks down Autumn-Storm and the poodle back to the chevalier's estate. There, he sneaks into the manor, to find Autumn-Storm dressed up in nice clothes and eating at DuValle's table. Alptraum trains a crossbow on DuValle (recently loaded with the very bolts DuValle expended earlier) and suggests that they have a chat about what to do about the "blood beast" before it kills anyone else.