Having barely survived the Speck plague that decimated the King's Cavalla Academy, Nevare Burvelle returns to his frontier home for his brother's wedding, only to find his body betraying him in a way he cannot explain. Instead of wasting away like other survivors, he gains weight uncontrollably, swelling far beyond what any appetite could account for. His father reads gluttony and weakness where there is only the slow grip of Speck magic, and the disgust of family, fiancee, and society follows Nevare wherever he goes. Cast out and disgraced, he drifts toward the raw edge of Gernian expansion, the timber town of Gettys, where the King's Road inches deeper into the ancient forest the dapple-skinned Specks hold sacred. There Nevare takes humble work and tries to build an ordinary life, reuniting with old friends and forming new bonds, but the magic woven into him answers to a different master. The forest pulls at him through dreams of a woman among the trees, and his loyalties fracture between the people who scorn him and the people whose land his nation is destroying. As disease, ambition, and resentment converge on the frontier, Nevare must reckon with a power that is reshaping not only his body but his sense of who he serves. This middle volume deepens a meditation on belonging, prejudice, and the cost of colonial expansion.