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Shallan lies on her back under the tower's shower after Adolin leaves for the war council, water turned down to a sprinkle, breathing in steam and the satisfaction of being seen and accepted by him for everything she is. Joyspren swirl around her like blue leaves. The reverie ends with a chorus of voices in her head — creationspren in a glowing cluster among the soap bars, cheering her name; Pattern dimpling the stone wall above. She rinses, dresses in one of Veil's coats, sets Pattern on her shoulder, and goes out onto the balcony, where two of her Lightweavers — Gaz and Red — have been keeping watch Lightwoven as planters. Two more, Stargyle and Darcira, have been holding the hallway from outside. No one has been spying on her rooms; the Ghostbloods are being unusually patient.

They gather around the table. Wit has sent twelve sketches of identified Ghostbloods in the tower — familiar faces and a few new ones, including two short masked offworlders whose clothing has a foreign cut. Wit's note: Iyatil has called in offworlder reinforcements, and they are dangerous. Stargyle reports brushing two of them in the atrium and feeling the same tension on both sides — all of them waiting for the spark. Shallan lingers over the sketch of Mraize — her teacher, brutal and manipulative, but the man who first saw something in her. She has been here before with every mentor she has lost. She lets Radiant take over.

Radiant lays out the leverage: they have what Kelek gave Shallan — the location of Mishram's prison — and the Ghostbloods do not. The enemy will move on her to extract it; that very fact tells the Unseen Court their next play. They are going to form a strike team and reach the prison first, and use it as a bargaining chip. Red needles her about Kaladin's shareable windspren plate — surely if she now has the Fourth Ideal armor too, she can hand it around — and Darcira the former ardent encourages the experiment. Shallan pictures the scene, commands the creationspren to *go to him*, and after some coaching the armor sleekly forms around Red in metallic-red ribbons, slimmer than Adolin's bulk. He stands locked in place. He cannot move a finger. Gaz proposes tipping him over so they can go to breakfast. The spren are embarrassed; Shallan reassures them. They are new.

She thinks, in the meantime, about Veil — alive in the back of her mind as her own voice, not as a separate person. Reintegration, she is starting to see, is not erasing the personas but acknowledging that different parts of her need different things. *This is what healing feels like.* They settle to the actual question — strike team, yes, but only after they uncover what Mraize is doing and why he wants Mishram's prison at all. They are going to do something he does not believe possible. They are going to steal his secrets. First step: find his current base.

The scene jumps to Dalinar on the balcony, catching up to the woman who turned out of his memory. *I go where I please. Should I not?* Her voice has the faintest grind of crumbling stone under it; her dress is woven, in places, of fine plant-like webs that rejoin her skin; her halo of lifespren is muted. The full presentation he met in the Valley is dialed down for tower foot traffic, but it is unmistakably her. Not a Fused trick; Fused powers are blocked here. *I remember you.* *I know. You wrote it in your book.* She is, she says, displeased with him for having put her into one of his recorded visions when she works so hard to remain hidden.

He pushes her for help — answers, how to use his Bondsmith powers, how to defeat Odium. *You must find the answers yourself to respect their meaning.* He calls that crem; she smiles and asks him whether he has ever known Odium frightened. *Once*, he says — the moment he crashed three realms together and called himself Unity. *I have once as well*, she says. *One other time. Deep in the past.* She lays out the lore he came for: Tanavast died, but Honor's power did not. The spren came from Honor but are not him; the core of the power still exists, somewhere, and it is the substance of the visions Dalinar has been receiving for years. It is looking for a new Vessel. He should seek it in the Spiritual Realm, where gods dwell. He has the ability to go there and, perhaps, to come back. *There you will receive the final truths of the Heralds, the Radiants, and Honor himself.* She walks a short distance and vanishes in a pop of lifespren.

Dalinar takes a Lashing from Sigzil and goes soaring up, leaving Colot to take the lift. *Stormfather, did you sense that?* The spren surges fully present, air warping — she almost never leaves her hiding place — and, asked to bless the Spiritual Realm journey, rumbles a dangerous, distant kind of thunder. *Would you take that step, Dalinar? Do you seek to lose yourself in the past?* He has shown Dalinar what he needs. More is dangerous. Cultivation meddling in this way at all troubles him; she is normally given to nudges that take decades. He withdraws to a faint awareness at the back of Dalinar's mind.

Dalinar reaches the meeting chamber. Jasnah has beaten him to the top — already there, watching Wit sit on the floor with a paper scroll and a small piece of white bone. *Something is wrong*, she explains. Wit has remembered an encounter with Odium he had forgotten — which means Odium altered his memories — and he now suspects the contract has loopholes Odium is exploiting, for reasons he is not yet explaining. Dalinar insists Odium promised the spirit of the contract, Wit himself having confirmed it true. Jasnah, visibly annoyed with Wit, says they will get answers on his timeline, not theirs. Dalinar sets out the battle maps and waves the generals in. There is much to plan.