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Kaladin walks downhill into a world that does not move. The forest below the Misted Mountains pass is fully green and fully docile: trees that do not quiver under his hand, vines that let his foot land, grass that lies down like dropped rope, leaves heavy with water that ring softly when he taps them. There are no lifespren. He should find it unnerving and instead finds it strangely beautiful — plants that, never having known the storm, have never had cause to hide. Syl is overjoyed and streaks from tree to bush as a tiny ribbon of light, sneaking up on plants that are too slow to dodge.

Szeth paces beside him, conserving Stormlight — Kaladin does not yet trust the Shin custom of spheres charging in Shinovar without a highstorm; Szeth admits that when he was a boy they almost never used spheres, relying on candles. Szeth is amused by Kaladin's assumption that most Shin trees come in strange colours; most, he says, are perfectly ordinary brown and green. Nightblood interjects from his sheath that as an inanimate object with feelings he is offended at being excluded from the conversation, then chuckles to himself.

Kaladin tries to open the door Dalinar sent him here to open. *Hey, sorry to hear you're crazy* will not do; he tries *Dalinar says you've had a rough time*, and is told it is not a question Szeth considers — he simply does what his master commands. Pushed about choice, Szeth reframes: he is here because this is the next step of his progress as a Skybreaker and because his land needs him, not as healing. Healing is something he does not deserve; the voices in the shadows are owed his life in recompense for the blood he has spilled. Kaladin presses on the proposition that scars can be loosened even when they cannot be removed; Szeth cuts him off. *Do not assume I will endure you trying to save me, Kaladin Stormblessed. Not all beneath your judging gaze are in need of your protection. Keep your attention on finding the Herald.* Syl whistles softly that he is *something*; Kaladin retreats and reframes — refuses to manipulate him into accepting help — and switches the conversation to Ishar.

Szeth does not know where Ishar — *Ishu-son-God* in the Shin tongue — is hiding, but he names the second problem. There is an Unmade in Shinovar. It has been awake there since before Kaladin became a Radiant and the Shin have embraced it, welcoming in its darkness and its manipulations. The cleansing of his people of it is the retribution he is here to deliver. Kaladin asks how he can be certain; Dalinar took years to recognize the Thrill. Because, Szeth answers, he met this one himself. The encounter began in his youth, with a rock.

At Urithiru in the garden-grown side chamber, Dalinar is alone with the Stormfather for the worst conversation they have had. An impossible gale washes the room out into a vision: Dalinar hangs in open sky above the curve of the world and faces the Stormfather as a cloud-titan stretched horizon to horizon, lightning behind inhuman eyes. Dalinar knows the trick of looking up at one's commander unbowed. He demands answers about Honor's power. *No*, the spren thunders. Wit is a liar. Cultivation is a traitor; she should know better than to suggest this. The power of a Shard does not go to one who wants it. *Why must you, Dalinar — even your brother, at his worst, did not strive for godhood. Why?*

Dalinar answers honestly: because he is overwhelmed and outmatched, and the only time he felt anything like control was when he stood up before Odium and touched the Spiritual Realm. *Unity*, the Stormfather names it. The two argue, Dalinar pushing on every evasion — impossible or implausible, Honor's plan or yours, why you have stymied me at every step — and the vision bends so that the two of them stand the same height eye to eye, an impossibility that lets them speak as equals. Then comes the admission. *What truly happened with Tanavast?* *Worse than I told you, Dalinar.* *So you lied.* *Yes. Does that surprise you? Anger you?* Dalinar breathes through it and finds he is relieved that the lie is finally on the table. He answers that the Stormfather is a person who can grow, learn, and make mistakes. The clouds calm. *I should be better than lies; I am the winds; I do not lie.*

Conditional permission lands. Dalinar may walk the Spiritual Realm as Cultivation urged and live the past — but he must not seek Honor's power, and once he is in there, the Stormfather cannot control where it takes him. The visions until now were carefully curated guard-rails. There will be no rails. *You will see our shame.*

The vision blinks out and Dalinar is standing, not collapsed, with Wit sitting on a table beside a fern that has grown through the floor. Wit could hear it. He concedes the Stormfather is right about him — keeping Odium captive on this world matters more to him than any of their lives — and Dalinar thanks him for the honesty. Wit then produces a small clock from Silverlight Mercantile, explains that time in the Spiritual Realm runs without anchor — hours there, decades here, in corner cases — and shows Dalinar how to Connect his bracer-fabrial clock to Wit's so the Physical Realm keeps his time honest for him. The plan is to push into the Spiritual Realm with mind only, leaving the body behind, opening a perpendicularity and stepping through with Wit's thread as the lifeline. *Should be able*, Wit says — and offers no quip after, which is always a bad sign. Dalinar sends for Navani and Jasnah to monitor and they will give it a try.