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Shallan brings Renarin, Rlain and an escort of Windrunners from the raid back to Urithiru and into Shadesmar via the Oathgate — sending one Windrunner on ahead to find Dalinar and Navani in case her spanreed message did not reach. On the other side she sees the post-awakening tower for the first time: where it had been a shimmer of light it is now a clone of Urithiru built of glowing glass, a sphere infused on the scale of a mountain, *too exuberant* to settle on one hue. Radiant has to take the wheel; the artistry undoes her. The ten Oathgates manifest here as tall pillars wreathed in inkspren-ramps and (since the Sibling woke) glowing walkways that connect each pillar to the tower's platform.

Isasik — the *other* one, the shorter Bridge Thirteen ex-squire of Teft — and Breteh report no sign of Mraize or Iyatil. The guards (in Urithiru's new white and gold, not Kholin blue) confirm no one has transferred through all day. Radiant folds her arms, beads bouncing around her feet calling *Other Shallan!*, and admits she might be wrong about Mraize coming here — until Renarin and Rlain point at the tower (each with a tell-tale soft red afterimage outlining the arm as it moves) and pick out the two Bondsmiths' souls glowing through the glass, descending on a lift. Wherever the Bondsmiths go is where the Ghostbloods will need to be when the portal opens. They fly after.

Lower in the tower, Navani leads the Physical-Realm party down through lifts and a long humming hallway — beneath her hand the wall thrums with the laundry-belt conveyor and the cycled water plant, the tower a body of living mechanism — to a remote water-cistern chamber on the ground floor. She is holding Gav's hand the whole way; the boy needs more of her and Dalinar. He admits he is afraid: the spren cluster of gloryspren above her bobs and reminds him of the spren that tormented him in Kholinar. Navani asks the gloryspren to back off; they do. She kneels and has Gav put his hand on the wall and *listen* — the tower hums, because boxes of laundry flow past on a belt and water cycles in cisterns. *The tower is good, Gav. It cares for us.* He feels it; the tower is alive. *All things are*, she tells him, the Almighty's gift, *which is one of the ways we know God loves us.* Privately, she still hopes Dalinar will return to conventional belief after all this, finds his new teachings *uncomfortable* though not strictly blasphemous.

Dalinar hands Gav to his governess at the cistern's threshold and tells the guards: *nobody enters*, the experiment could take an hour. Inside, water crashes over the wall pipes into the lit basin; Wit approves of the cover noise. He produces from his pocket a small chip of granite — *rock from Ashyn*, he tells Navani, a fragment of a holy site humans carried to Roshar during their migration that, after thousands of years and several civilisational collapses, became the seed of Shin reverence for stone. The Shin worship rocks, he says lightly, and no longer know why. She gapes: *have you told them? Written this down?* He shrugs. *I keep meaning to.* Dalinar turns the rock over: *you just have one of these?* *I picked it out myself*, Wit answers, *right before the migration.* He admits he was there. *Look, I cannot be expected to tell you everything that has happened in the last ten thousand years.*

The rock is an anchor — an object Connected to a particular moment in time — and Wit has chosen this one because he was there and can authenticate that the experiment worked. They will be drawn, if it does, to the *arrival of humankind on Roshar*. Ideally only their minds will be taken; their bodies should stay in the cistern. He coaches them in pressing Stormlight into the floor as a tether-rope of light along which they can be pulled back, or pull themselves back, or be summoned through. Navani insists on the *mechanics* of getting in — at which point Wit confesses, light dancing on the cistern ceiling, that he does not know. He has only ever stepped into the perpendicularity from a *godpool* — a natural spring grown around a god's presence, calling to him as a fish that once escaped the hook — and followed the call by instinct. He can share the feel of that pull, not a list of steps. They will *feel it out*. She meets Dalinar's eyes; he sighs, nods. *Let's open the perpendicularity and feel it out.*

In Shadesmar above, Radiant flies the group after the candle-flame souls of Dalinar and Navani, leaving Breteh's squires at the gateway. The corridors here are alive with wildlife-spren whose Physical-Realm forms she has only ever seen tame: fearspren like eels with feet, six-armed wall-clingers with eyes in their mouths, hulking shadows through the walls. Shallan grins, wishes she had her sketchbook, and resolves that when all this is over she will write a great illustrated treatise on the bond between human and spren — and prove her art and her science were always one. They land at a stairwell going down toward the Bondsmiths.

Renarin takes Shallan aside on the way down. The visual cacophony of the Cognitive Realm is loud to every sense; he palms two spheres to click and self-regulate. He tells her: he saw Mishram today in a vision, the worst spren he has ever seen, worse than the Thrill or the thing that wore Amaram's body. *So we have to keep the Ghostbloods from her.* Or, Renarin suggests, the opposite — perhaps if they meddle, *they* are how she gets free; perhaps her prison is strong enough that without their help Mraize cannot reach her. Shallan cannot let Mraize do whatever he wants. Renarin presses: she did not come for him because he might spot Enlightened bondees in the crowd; she came because she hopes Glys can guide her into the Spiritual Realm herself. *I am working on instinct*, she says, and quickens her step. He asks Glys; Glys hesitates, then promises he will try.

They reach the cistern hall in Shadesmar — its glass mirror perfectly empty, only the bright soul-flames of Dalinar, Navani and the multi-coloured shimmer of Wit inside. Shallan stands hands on hips: *did I misjudge?* Renarin points to two souls in an air duct on the wall — could be spies — and a fainter green smear that Pattern identifies as cultivationspren: Lift sneaking after Dalinar again. So not Ghostbloods there. Rlain presses: what should they be watching *for*? — what powers do Sja-anat's Enlightened bondees have? Shallan answers that one of them can move bodily between Shadesmar and the Physical Realm, so they might be waiting on the other side to pop in as the portal opens. Renarin asks whether one of them could be a Lightweaver — disguised. Shallan's eyes widen. She turns to look back through the clear glass door at the three new soldiers they themselves posted at the cistern: two short, one tall.