- Octavian turns super Observant—so much so that he can't really observe anything.
- We know—it seems like a contradiction, but Octavian has his reason, which is that he doesn't know if his senses don't work properly or if they're so sensitive and open that they have no limits to what they're sensing.
- In other words, Octavian has observed that he doesn't know what he's observing.
- Why?
- His senses are just starting to return.
- He notices that there's light all around him, but he doesn't know if before he was only awake at night, or if maybe his sight and other senses just shut down with all the trauma.
- All he knows is that he's not in the cellar (where he thought he was) but in an upper bedroom.
- It's summer and super-hot in the room; he can hear cicadas and crickets in the fields outside—he can practically imagine the scene that would greet him if he looked past the shutters.
- What Octavian can't stop thinking about though, is the fact that he's back at the house.