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A black storm. Black wind. Black rain. Then, piercing the blackness like a spear, a lance of light. Kaladin Stormblessed. Reborn. Kaladin explodes through the darkness surrounded by a swirling vortex of joyful windspren. *Go,* he shouts. *Find him.* Though it felt like hours of falling, he had spent most of that time in the place between moments; if he is still falling, mere seconds have passed and his father is falling somewhere below. Still alive. Windspren meet the storm and blow it back ahead of him, opening a tunnel of light toward a single distant tumbling figure. Kaladin's Lashings pile atop one another as Syl spins around him, laughing — storms, how he had missed her laughter. He stretches out his hand, and a windspren slams into it and flashes, outlining his hand with a glowing transparent gauntlet. A dozen others follow him, joyful, exultant; lines of light explode around him as the spren transform — pulled into this realm, choosing to Connect to him. The ground rises up to meet them. Almost. Almost.

*Not worthy.* The words echo against Navani's soul, and for a moment she forgets Moash and the tower. *Not good enough. Not a scholar. Not a creator. You have no fame, accomplishment, or capacity of your own. Everything that is distinctive about you came from someone else.* *Lies,* she whispers, and they truly are. She presses her hand to the pillar and offers the Bondsmith First Ideal — *life before death.* The Sibling, soft — *we are too different. You capture spren.* *Who better to work together than two who believe differently? Strength before weakness. We can compromise. Isn't that the soul of building bonds, of uniting?* Moash kicks Raboniel away into the wall, limp as a doll. *We can find the answers,* Navani says, blood dribbling from her lips. *Together.* *You just want to live.* *Don't you?*

Moash looks down the hall toward her. She closes her eyes and tries to hum Stormlight's tone, pure and vibrant, and falters — too close to death, with everything falling apart. She finds the other tone instead, the chaotic rhythm Raboniel always gave her, eager to claim her. And she inverts it. All it takes is Intent. Odium gave her the song; she twists it back on him, the song of anti-Voidlight, her hand pressed to the pillar. *Navani! The darkness retreats ever so slightly. What are you doing?* the Sibling gasps. *I created this for you.* The song is not loud enough — but it has frozen Moash in place. *I can hear my mother's tone,* the Sibling whispers. *But not my tone. I think it is because my father is dead.* *Honor is not dead,* Navani whispers. *He lives inside the hearts of his children.* *Does he? Truly?* It is a plea, not a challenge. Navani searches deep — was what she had been doing honourable? Imprisoning spren in fabrials? — and finds a pure song rising up from within her, orderly and powerful. She had made mistakes, certainly. But she had been trying to help, to discover, to learn, to make the world better. Honor's song wells up inside her and she sings it; the pillar begins to vibrate as the Sibling sings Cultivation's song, the pure sound of Lifelight. Navani modulates her tone closer and closer and closer until — the two snap into harmony. The boundless energy of Cultivation, always growing and changing, and the calm solidity of Honor, organised and structured, vibrating together. Structure and nature. Knowledge and wonder. *The song of science itself.* *That is it,* the Sibling whispers to the Rhythm of the Tower. *My song.* *Our emulsifier,* Navani whispers back. *The common ground between humans and spren. That is why I was created, so long ago.* Moash grabs her, spins her around against the pillar and raises his Blade. *Navani,* the Sibling says. *I accept your Words.* Power floods her, making the pain evaporate; together she and the Sibling create Light. The energy surges through her so fully that she feels it bursting from her eyes and mouth as she looks up at Moash and speaks. *Journey before destination, you bastard.*

Lirin hangs in the air, eyes squeezed shut and trembling. He remembers falling, the awful tempest, darkness — and then stillness inside a storm. Something has yanked his arm. Was he dead? He opens his eyes to a column of radiant light hundreds of feet high — thousands upon thousands of windspren — holding back the storm. He dangles from the gauntleted fist of a Shardbearer in resplendent Shardplate that seems alive, glowing blue at the seams, Bridge Four glyphs across the chest. It is Kaladin. When Lirin touches the Plate it becomes completely transparent, barely visible as a faint outline. *I'm sorry, Father,* Kaladin says. *I thought your way might be correct, and that I'd been wrong. But I don't think it's that simple. I think we're both correct. For us.* *I think perhaps I can accept that.* They are barely twenty feet above the rocks. *Cutting it a little tight, don't you think, son?* *A surgeon must be timely and precise.* Kaladin touches his father's forehead with fingers that feel normal despite their glowing outline. *What is this?* The painted shash glyph Lirin finally let that one-armed fool put there — *if an entire tower was going to show faith in my son, I could maybe try to do the same.* Lirin brushes Kaladin's hair aside to see the brand. The scabs flake away to the stones below like a shell outgrown; clean smooth skin is left behind. Kaladin laughs and pulls his father tighter. *Careful, son. I'm not a Radiant. We mortals break.* *Radiants break too,* Kaladin whispers. *But then, fortunately, we fill the cracks with something stronger.*