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Kaladin jogs through the dark tunnels of Urithiru with Teft across his shoulders, his bloodied shoes looped by their laces around his neck, and feels each step crack the rest of his life under him. He has finally thought to take the shoes off and he still feels he is leaving stained tracks. Storms — what does he think he can accomplish alone, against the queen's order to surrender? He buries the thought. *No thoughts. Thoughts are dangerous. Just move.* Syl flies ahead checking each intersection. Stormlight keeps him moving for now; he should have stripped the spheres off the dying Regal, the axe too, instead of leaving with just his boot scalpel. He climbs stairs two at a time toward the seventh, then the eighth floor, hoping for the empty upper levels. Teft starts muttering, perhaps to the jostling. He sinks into an old familiar mindset: a man carrying weight on an extended march. It is too much like bridge runs. Friends dying. Daily terror. Not comforting, but at least familiar.

He goes alert at nothing he can name and ducks into a side passage, knees down with Teft, hand over the man's mouth. Red light creeps along the corridor he left. A single ruby. Glowing red eyes. Pure black skin with marbled red under the eyes; long dark hair woven into the wrap. The Pursuer, in a new body. It pauses at the intersection and walks on past, deeper along the path Kaladin had been taking. The singers at the clinic had said a Fused was looking for him; he came here specifically for Kaladin. Kaladin mouths an order to Syl — *follow it, I'll find somewhere more secluded* — and she sketches the singer kejeh affirmative glyph in light and zips after the Fused. Kaladin hauls Teft back up and pushes deeper into the dark, allowing himself almost no light. The tower is oppressive here. He could imagine wandering this stone forever as a tomb.

Syl catches him again. The Pursuer went only a short way before doubling back; he found a small smear of Kaladin's blood on the wall. Kaladin sets Teft down in a side room and prepares his last few spheres, pockets them dark, lets Syl sail past in the corridor and stands silent against the wall. *Loose, relaxed, but ready to come alight. Like tinder waiting for the spark.* Footsteps scrape; the corridor bleeds red. The Pursuer catches Syl's motion and ribbons after her, dropping his body as a husk. He counts ten heartbeats, runs back for Teft, and reaches a stairwell — and freezes at lights and voices on the rhythms above him and below.

The enemy is forming a noose. He pulls into the dark and recognises the feeling from the days when he was a runaway slave, lights moving in patterns hunting him. Syl zips back: she was trying to lead the Pursuer toward the level's edge when regular soldiers got in the way, and the Fused figured out she was a distraction. There are multiple squads up here — maybe a company. He has burned the Fused's head start by letting that frightened warform run from the clinic to tell others. The cordon must have gaps, but every corridor he tries is blocked. He twists around through rooms until he is at a dead end. He sets Teft down, counts his pitiful spheres, takes out the scalpel reverse-grip. He will need to take a spear from the first man he kills. Syl sits on his shoulder as a small seated young woman. *We have to try to punch through,* he whispers. *There's a chance they'll send only a couple men this direction.* But he can hear a louder, harsher voice in the calling — the Pursuer. *Could we surrender,* Syl asks softly. *That Fused isn't here to take me captive, Syl.* *If you die I'll be alone again.* He cannot lie to her, and stops trying.

Light begins to come up the corridor. A part of him has always known it would come to this — alone in the dark, back to the wall, facing overwhelming numbers. A glorious way to die. He never wanted glory. Then Syl catches a faint violet light at the rightmost corner of the floor. A garnet vein in the stone, a small portion of it glowing. As he watches the glow moves along the crystal — across the doorway, into the room opposite. He follows. There is a gemstone embedded in the far wall. *A fabrial,* Syl says, *infuse it!* He breathes a little of his Light into it and the wall splits down its centre in silence and slides open wide enough for him to pass with Teft across his shoulders. Behind him it slides smoothly closed and the gem goes dark. Voices in the room he left, an argument with the Pursuer's tone in it. He presses his ear to the wall. They cannot find his door, but they will see the spren marks. The little violet light pulses; he lugs Teft after it through more corridors and up a hidden stairwell — blessedly undefended — until the Sibling leads him to a second door on the eleventh floor and he uses the last of his Stormlight to open it. In absolute darkness he sets Teft down, slides to the cold floor, and finally lets himself drift to sleep.