Initially nervous when arriving in Kirkwall, Merrill finds lodging in the city's Alienage and joins Hawke's party. Marethari explains to Hawke that Merrill had decided to leave her increasingly hostile clan to learn more about the outside world and continue her studies into restoring the Eluvian. The ritual entails the resurrection of Flemeth, as a portion of her essence is revealed to have been embedded in the amulet. In the rite, Merrill recites the song In Uthenera, a poem for the departed. When Hawke arrives at the Dalish camp in Sundermount, she takes part in a ritual that Hawke is to perform on a mountain-top altar. She argues with Marethari that her efforts to learn blood magic were necessary towards the restoration of the Eluvian, and ultimately the survival of the Dalish with the Keeper publicly opposed to her efforts, the clan turns against her. As she lacked the necessary amount of lyrium to cleanse the shard with ordinary magic, she used blood magic to amplify her power so she could succeed this spell seemed to be utilized in the Dalish Origin to help the Warden deal with the taint.
Her efforts to construct an Eluvian-a combination of her ardent lack of interpersonal skills and her pragmatism-caused her to turn to blood magic, which she had learned from Audacity-a pride demon imprisoned and sundered from the Fade atop Sundermount. Merrill asks Marethari for help in cleansing the shard of the taint, but the Keeper refuses. She studied the lore on the Eluvian, and extrapolated information from the shard. Following the events surrounding the disappearance of Tamlen, Merrill has kept a fragment of the Eluvian in the old ruins to cleanse it of its taint.