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Contemplation, the first to react, jumps to her feet and points across the table — she had known it, she knew it, she had seen through his odd features and his earlier gibberish. He is one of them. A Sunlit Man. Confidence calls the term a legend. Compassion softens it: long ago there lived a people who could take the sunlight into themselves rather than be destroyed by it; who built a city beneath the ground; the Sunlit Ones. Nomad protests that the sunline very nearly killed him and only brushed him a few seconds, but the word has already taken hold. Contemplation slots the rest in for him: the Cinder King has spent years trying to open that door precisely because he believes the same story, and the door's owner has just walked in from the Refuge of Stone.

Nomad does not bother arguing the cosmology — only that he wants through the door too and is willing to help them get there. Aux asks, in Alethi, whether the squire is planning to warn them what they will actually find behind it: not a sanctuary, but most likely a small Scadrian survey installation. Nomad answers, also in Alethi, that getting them to the door is where his responsibility ends. Aux calls him callous and lets it drop — their best chance to get off this planet runs through that installation too. He offers his credentials: he can read the script on the disc — it belonged to a lieutenant named Haridan, who used it as an authorisation badge — and if there is anyone inside he can speak with them. The room takes it as further confirmation. Sunlit, Contemplation breathes again.

Zeal proposes accepting his help. Compassion invokes Adonalsium in blessing on the venture, prompting Nomad to ask how a band of Threnodites ended up praying to the father god of another planet entirely. Confidence answers that they were the ones who believed the first Lodestar before the exodus from Hell. Nomad bites back Aux's reminder that Adonalsium has been dead ten thousand years and the cynical reply he is itching to deliver, and lets the line about Adonalsium remembering them stand. Jeffrey Jeffrey asks the sharper question: the Cinder King has tried for years and failed to get past the door — can Nomad really activate the disc and open it? Nomad says yes; he is not from the place beyond, but he knows the people who built it and speaks their language.

Contemplation, alone, hears him properly when he tries to warn her that whatever is behind the door will not be the refuge they need. He admits, when pressed, that he cannot promise it for certain, only that experience makes him doubtful. The leaders exchange glances; Confidence — the room's earlier sceptic — is the one who says aloud that they have no better hope, and Jeffrey Jeffrey agrees that with dwindling power and an enraged Cinder King, this is all they have. Compassion asks that they put the question to the rest of Beacon before they commit. Contemplation agrees; there are no tyrants here, only family. Nomad asks for food, dry clothing, and a bed in exchange for translating the disc. Rebeke asks dryly whether he has a fee for opening the door too. Just the way in, he answers — and the bracers off his arms. Zeal goes to fetch the attuner.

While they wait, the Greater Good probes him about the spirit they have noticed accompanying him. He brushes off Confidence's question about how he materialises objects, and is privately surprised the women let him; usually his abilities draw open worship rather than a polite shrug. He watches Rebeke pouring tea instead of talking — splattered with mud, hat lost, brother dead today, sister chained as one of the Charred — and recognises shock when he sees it; he knows what it costs to keep busy because stopping means facing it. In Alethi he calls Aux out for going against orders to fetch Wit. Aux pleads transformation in light. Nomad answers that most change is slower than that — the slow steady slide toward the pit, the way they age. Aux notes that he does not age anymore. His body might not, Nomad allows; his soul has been wearing away for years.

The conversation pivots when Confidence announces that they still have to discuss a punishment for the one who defied their orders — Rebeke stiffens. Nomad cuts in: the girl is the reason they have him at all, and a council that wants to be different from the Cinder King's tyranny should think hard before it starts punishing people for trying to help. Confidence answers dryly that with age he will learn the difference between tyranny and proper authority. Nomad, amused, asks how old she thinks he is; older teens, Confidence offers; young twenties, Contemplation corrects. He had been thirty-eight when the Dawnshard ended his ageing, and that was by his homeworld's long year. He swallows the explanation and warns them, plainly, that he has seen plenty of tyranny conducted in the name of "the greater good", and the only way to avoid the title is to act like one does not deserve it.

The second bracer comes off. He shoulders the rifle — half tempted to fire a few rounds into the ceiling just to shake them all — and asks for food, clothing, and a bed in that order. Compassion assigns Rebeke as his escort, "as part of her punishment". Then Contemplation asks the last question: can the outsider fly? Nomad freezes for an instant — until he understands that she means a ship. Probably, he says, with a little instruction on the controls. Why? Because, Contemplation says, the corridor holding the door is almost upon them. They need a decision and then they need a hunt. And she would rather know whether the Sunlit Man needs a babysitter or not.