Titus Groan survive outside the castle, and he sets up various homes in the nearby forest and on Gormenghast Mountain. Having a strong attachment to the castle, and feeling a need to watch over Steerpike and to protect Titus, Flay returns secretly to Gormenghast during the night. Four nights after Titus’ first birthday, Flay finds Swelter wandering the castle with a meat cleaver. Swelter does not know of Flay’s banishment, and expects him to be sleeping where he has always slept up until now. Flay follows him to just outside Sepulchrave’s door, where Swelter discovers that Flay is not there, and soon
Titus Awakes in the Overlook editions (albeit in both single volume and omnibus). Mills (2005) comments on the irony of the narrator's comment that Titus would never again see Gormenghast Castle, for "even in the first proposed chapter, Titus returns in a dream to Gormenghast and the fight between Swelter and Flay." The textual repetition in the preadventure was commented upon by Chris Sandow, who stated that "[t]he fragments are clearly no more than early drafts". However, it is not clear that the repetition is an error. Early in 2010 Sebastian Peake announced that his daughter had found Maeve Gilmore's notebook MS