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On the inspection ground outside the Kholin warcamp Teleb's widened siege bridge cracks under the first chull-pulled load and splits with a crunch that turns every head on the field. Dalinar tells him to keep working and walks on with Adolin. As they go Dalinar asks his son — without reason given — whether he feels the Thrill in combat. Adolin is too startled to answer well. They pass a work-gang cutting a latrine ditch and Dalinar stops a moment too long to watch, wondering aloud why the Radiants left their successors weapons and never tools — never aqueducts, never granaries, never roads. Adolin sees how strained his father is and is afraid in a way he has not been since they buried his uncle.

In the inspections-room Danlan reads aloud a spanreed exchange Dalinar has been conducting with Jasnah in Kharbranth. She has been studying an ancient illustration of a Voidbringer that looks remarkably like a chasmfiend; the original artist clearly knew chasmfiends from life, several generations after the Heralds are supposed to have left and the Voidbringers with them. Dalinar asks her plainly to come home to the warcamps. He hints that he is about to do something she will not like. She will not promise a date. He thanks the clerks and dismisses them. Navani does not leave with the others; she presses him on why he prizes her daughter so. *Because she refuses to make professions she does not believe.*

Then he tells Navani flatly what he has decided. He is going to abdicate the Kholin princedom in favor of Adolin within the week, and recommend that the king strip him from court. He has come to believe the visions may be an inherited disease of the mind — Gavilar grew strange in his last years in the same way — and he refuses to drag the kingdom under with him. Navani argues; he sends her out. Too tired to even unhook the chest of his Plate, he sits down on the floor in the empty room with his back against the wall and watches the windows go dark. He will tell Adolin in the morning. **The end of Part Two.**