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Shallan huddles in the long room where Muri used to live, in a darkness she has stopped tracking the hours of. For a while after Grund died she was everybody — cycling a hundred faces, hunting any one of them that did not hurt — until the watching refugees fled calling her a spren, her Stormlight burned itself out, and there was only Shallan again. In the dark her mind supplies images: her father's purpling face as she sang to him and twisted the chain; her mother with burned eye sockets; Tyn run through by Pattern; Kabsal convulsing on the floor; Yalb drowned with the Wind's Pleasure; the unnamed coachman the Ghostbloods murdered; now Grund. The lie of Veil is suddenly visible to her — she has never lived on the streets and does not know how to help anyone there. The big picture she had been leaving to Shallan is bigger than Shallan can hold, too: an Oathgate guarded by an Unmade that climbs into people's minds.

Light leans into the doorway. Wit steps in, sets a sphere on the floor, slides down the opposite wall until his legs reach hers, and gives her the silence. *I should have known better,* she finally whispers. *Perhaps,* he says. *Giving so much food only drew predators.* *Again, perhaps.* He tells her the men of the market have already dealt with the killers — that they finally formed the militia they had been talking about, took the Grips' base, made them give up the murderer, dispersed the rest, and apologises for not having moved sooner himself. He had been distracted, he says, by other tasks. The food she had been giving away was still in their stores.

*Was it worth that boy's life?* she asks. He answers that he does not know how to judge the worth of a life and would not dare. Muri had said it would be better if Shallan were dead. He answers that since he himself has not learned to weigh a life he doubts Muri has either — that the only way to live without failing is to be of no use to anyone, and he has practised. She tells him she has to become Veil to keep clear of the memories, but does not have any of the life Veil is pretending to have lived. *No,* he says softly. *You've lived a harsher one.*

He asks if she knows the story of the Girl Who Looked Up and starts blowing crem off the floor, trying to make the figure rise. He cannot. He pushes her a bag of spheres. She breathes the Stormlight in until it rages, then breathes it out as the village and the wall and the girl in scarves — and the room around them disappears into the painted landscape. Wit tells her it is not dark enough. He taps the air; she lets the colour and light bleed out. *In these days there was no light.* He guides her through it. The villagers in his telling stumble through every chore by the faint stars. The girl asks each of them why the wall is there; they tell her not to go past it or she will die. *Was she stupid or bold?* Wit asks. *Both.*

They lift the scene up onto the wall's top. *The girl finds steps,* Shallan tells him, *and the girl realises the wall wasn't to keep something in but to keep her and her people out.* *Because?* *Because we're monsters.* Wit crosses to her and quietly puts his arms around her. She buries her face in his shirt and tells him she had to kill them; that she has said the words now and cannot ignore it; that perhaps she should die for having done it. He turns her back to the story. Beyond the wall, he says, was God's Light — and as he speaks it erupts in colour over the painted landscape, and the girl in scarves sees the world coloured for the first time. *She climbed down the steps,* Shallan whispers, watching her own illusion run them. *She hid among the creatures who lived on this side. She sneaked up to the Light and brought a piece of it back.* The chase, the climb, the wild descent — and then light in the village for the first time, followed by the storms boiling over the wall. People suffered, Wit tells her, but they would not have chosen to go back; once they had seen, they could see.

He asks if Shallan wishes she could go back to not being able to see. *No.* *Then live,* he tells her. *And let your failures be part of you.* She accuses him of trying to teach her a moral. He admits to it; even he fails now and then. He brushes his hand to either side of her, and her Stormlight folds into two identical illusions of herself in Veil's white coat. He gives one of them her father, her brother, her Jasnah, her dead — and that one shakes her head, slides down the wall, and collapses curled up. Shallan calls her worthless. He gives the second illusion the same memories. She sets her jaw and stands there. *They're identical,* he says. *Of course they're not,* Shallan snaps, and touches the standing one — and feels, smothering the memories, forgiveness for herself. She pulls her hand back as if bitten.

*It's terrible to have been hurt,* he tells her. *But it's okay to live on.* He tells her her other minds take over because they look more appealing, and she will not control them until she trusts herself enough to come back to the one who birthed them. *If you don't trust yourself, can you trust me? For in you I see a woman more wonderful than any of the lies.* Both illusions vanish. *I see only one woman here. And it's the one who is standing up. Shallan, that has always been you. You just have to admit it. Allow it. It's all right to hurt.* He pulls Veil's hat from his pack and presses it into her palm. Morning light is in the doorway. She tells him she cannot. *There are certain things I know,* he says. *This is one of them. You can. Find the balance. Accept the pain, but don't accept that you deserved it.* Pattern hums in appreciation. Wit gathers his things and steps out into the light, and is gone where she does not see him.

She walks back to Yokska's shop wearing trousers and a coat under her own red hair, with Veil's hat in her hand and her safehand gloved — and she finds it, somehow, fine. Adolin is at the table inside, exhausted from worrying about her; he stands as she comes in, embraces her, and won't let go. He praises the cut of her clothes — red on white, sharp, bold, would look better with a sword — and then trails off, listening. *A parade this early?* she asks. They step out and see Kaladin marching up the street at the head of five or six hundred Wall Guard uniforms, with Highmarshal Azure beside him: a young woman, helm under her arm, two scars crossing her face. Adolin sighs. Elhokar scrambles down the stairs inside, shouting. *Stormblessed?* he asks. *What is this?* *You've been wanting an army to attack the palace, Your Majesty,* Kaladin tells him. *Well, we're ready.*