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Dalinar stands inside a black-skied staging place between his world and the visions when the Stormfather announces that he has the Thaylen queen and that the highstorm is striking her city now. Shapes seep out of the bone-white stone ground — chairs, vases, the occasional person — and dissolve. Dalinar gives the plan: drop Fen into the Midnight Essence vision the Knights Radiant arrive in to save a beset village, the same place the Stormfather once put him. He will observe and talk to her after. The Stormfather refuses on principle — every participant must have a role; this is how it works. Dalinar settles for being one of the Radiants sent to defend the town, but asks that Fen still see him as himself, and he her. The Stormfather grudgingly agrees and admits, almost embarrassed, that he imagined this staging place himself: everything has a soul, and a vase dies twice — once when it breaks, again when men forget it was ever a vase — and he likes to imagine the soul floating away then.

Dalinar finds himself hurtling through the night air over violet moonlight, screaming until he realizes the wind is pushing his head, not his face — a Windrunner is Lashing him toward the village. He has taken the place of the man's female partner, who in the original wore glowing amber Plate; here he wears a brown uniform and his own side sword, no Plate. The Windrunner flies ahead in living blue armor, dismisses his helm so they can speak, and tells him to stop pestering: the Plate hasn't been summoned, and asks if Dalinar will be a problem on the mission. The Stormfather reminds Dalinar that these people do not have souls or minds — they are re-creations forged by Honor's will, conveying only the ideas Honor intended, and pushing them with off-script questions only reveals the thinness of the facade. Dalinar notes he should bring Navani and Jasnah in to pick at the recreations themselves.

The Windrunner dives to the swarm of Midnight Essence — black, oily, axehound-sized beasts on six crab-spindly legs — and tells Dalinar to make for the town. Dalinar floats down and creeps through the streets to the house where, last time, he had been the husband Heb. He finds Taffa's body by the hearth, feels the loss as sharply as a real death, and finds no sign of Fen or Seeli. Outside, realizing he is creeping through a vision that is his — that should not frighten him — he stops the next beast bare-handed, paints another with Stormlight and hurls it stuck to a wall, and cuts two more apart with his side sword as he heads toward an orange glow at the end of the street.

It is a bonfire of furniture, ringed by townspeople with brooms and crude picks and the occasional poker, children at the center near the heat, fearspren writhing at their feet but holding ranks anyway. A woman barks orders from atop a box: Fen, a foot shorter than Dalinar, oval-faced, white Thaylen eyebrows curling beside her cheeks, in the brown shirt and trousers of the man the vision gave her — with a glove found for her safehand. Some defenders fall in heaps; others pin the creatures and stab open their backs to deflate them. The Windrunner sweeps in, finishes the last beasts, and glares at Dalinar for standing around. Dalinar walks past him to Fen, who notes drily that this dream has gotten strange enough to bring out the Blackthorn himself. He asks the Stormfather to slow it down. The bonfire's flames go sluggish and the people crawl, and the two of them sit on boxes to talk.

Dalinar explains: no dream is this crisp; this was left behind by something that wanted humans to survive the Desolations, and there are many more visions like it. Fen tells him she let the mother die and ran with the child, used her almost as bait, and asks why he trapped her in this. He answers honestly: he just wanted to talk to her in person. He praises what she organized in the streets and demands how she can claim, in a similar moment of need at home, she means to turn her back on the world. She snaps that she is seeing to her people, not turning her back on anyone — and then, hardening, pushes the real question: he expects her to accept that the Radiants are back and that the Almighty has chosen a murderer and tyrant to lead them? Dalinar draws in Stormlight in answer, smoke rising luminous from his skin: the Radiants have returned. She accepts the new storm; what she does not accept is the Almighty's commission to him personally.

She names the Hierocracy and Sadees the Sunmaker — other men who claimed mandates from the Almighty — and walks among the frozen townsfolk throwing the parallel back at him: now here is the Blackthorn, insisting she let his armies into her city. Dalinar loses his patience. He concedes everything she has just accused him of and demands what else she would have him do, perhaps her options are all bad and he is what she is stuck with — and stops, sure he has blown it. Fen only studies him with strange interest and asks where this passion was in his letters: they read like a committee. She would rather hear honest shouting. As they step away from the frozen crowd she admits the spanreed informants have been calling him mad for months — refused fights, mad quest into the Weeping, a kingdom seized in everything but title, talk of a new storm, of Knights Radiant, of enslaving Voidbringers — and she had been ready to believe it, until the storm came. Dalinar realizes what she now suspects instead: that he is in league with the enemy, which is why his polished words sounded too smooth to be him.

Fen asks to see how the rest of the vision plays out, particularly what becomes of the little girl. Dalinar sees Seeli for the first time, hollow-eyed by the fire. The Stormfather resumes the vision; the Windrunner finishes the last creatures and tells Fen her humble upbringing has hidden a remarkable talent for leadership — if she wants to learn true leadership, she should come to Urithiru and to Alethela, where any who wish to fight should be guided. Then Seeli stands and speaks to her in the closing voice the visions always use, warning her not to let strife consume her, urging her to act honorably and trust honor to answer in return. Dalinar hears it again knowing now that Honor is dead. The Stormfather tells him Fen still does not trust him; she only wonders now whether he made the vision with the power of the Voidbringers. *So you've failed again.* *No,* Dalinar says. Tonight she listened, and he thinks she will end up taking the gamble of coming — because he finally knows how to talk to her. She doesn't want polite words; she wants him to be himself. That, at least, he can deliver.