(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Hidden in the cistern's air shafts, Lift gasps as Dalinar's perpendicularity opens; the light passes straight through her, and within it she catches a vision of the girl she could have been — confident, dressed in her Iriali clothing from Rall Elorim, a familiar hand with painted nails resting on her shoulder. She admits to herself for the first time that she does not actually believe her mother is dead; she only says it. The vision vanishes when Gavinor whispers behind her in the shaft. He has followed her, hiding behind her sneak — *we have to learn when to obey and when not to obey,* he reminds her — and she tries to push him back down the tunnel before they are caught.

Then Navani shouts inside the room, and the light starts pulling them. Lift tries un-awesome friction — and instead flips into the air, hurled toward the rift — until Wit grabs her by the arm from below, casting a shadow against the brightness. He grunts against the suction until the perpendicularity vanishes. *Both of you owe me*, he tells her. He saw only her — the highly Invested girl who outshines everyone nearby to his life sense. Gav is gone. Wit peeks across into Shadesmar with Design and confirms it: Lieke's broken corpse and a destroyed chamber, but no sign of Dalinar, Navani or Gav anywhere. They have gone, bodies and all, into the Spiritual Realm. They have eight days to find their way back. If Dalinar fails to appear at the contest by his own choice, the contract counts as broken oath — and as Dalinar represents Honor, a forfeit unbinds Odium to rampage in the cosmere. Wit decides the only way to keep the tower from rioting is to lie: he draws in Stormlight and prepares an illusion of Dalinar and Navani still being present.

On a Shinovar hillside under first moon, Kaladin has just admitted defeat against his own stew. He has helped Rock dozens of times and brought a heavy pack for the express purpose of cooking for Szeth — the trick was to draw a man in by feeding him something good — but the pot tastes like crem and Szeth has already eaten his ration bar. He probes anyway, gets stonewalled, then turns to Wit's flute and the written positionings and produces only breathy nothing. He throws the flute into the dirt and stalks into the night to fight back what he calls the dark brain: that he is good for nothing but war. Syl talks him down by name, reminding him that Bridge Four wasn't killing, it was love. He returns to find Szeth has tried the stew and would eat it again — a small win — and stunned, Szeth admits the basin of Shinovar below them is wrong: no candle lights at the homesteads, the villages simply dark. He confesses too that he does love his people; the exile was for years his proof of that. They agree to visit his family homestead in the morning.

Kaladin picks the flute up again and the Wind returns to speak in his ear — the music *the ancient one* taught him calls to her. Odium is *made anew*, she tells him; his attention has shifted off her, and that is why she can speak now after years of silence. Stay, watch with her; together they must somehow preserve a remnant of Honor. She fades. He keeps blowing awful notes on the flute — the most stubborn fool of a person who ever lived — and looks up to find the Herald Ishar standing in front of him.

Meanwhile Lopen flies the other two Windrunners over to the blast site on the Shadesmar side. He finds Isasik worried that the others ended up as person-mush; Lopen reassures him there is no person-mush, only the dead Lieke — Malwish by the broken mask — and concludes the Bondsmiths must have passed through into the Spiritual Realm. He reads Navani's suspiciously calm shrug back at the tower for the lie it is, decides the smart move is to assume the people in charge have it in hand, and pulls Isasik away to fly the Mink's people to Herdaz. Rua, having watched him copy his missing arm, points up at the sun and the realm beyond it and nods enthusiastically when Lopen guesses *the realm where gods live.*

Back on the hillside, Ishar arrives without sound and the last vestiges of wind die around him. Syl gets up, refusing to shrink. Ishar turns to Kaladin — *I do not know you, I thought you insignificant* — and reads him as Connected to both Dalinar (*the false champion*) and Szeth (*my servant*), the Ancient Daughter bonded at his side. He dismisses Ash and Taln as useless — and reveals, almost casually, what he believes the Oathpact was for: he founded it so he could siphon some of each Herald's darkness onto himself. He carries the others' pains. Taln is in thrall because Ishar does *not* carry his. *I am the conflux of all darkness and sorrow. And still I stand. I am a god.* He calls himself Ishar Ascended, says *Tezim died* in the moment Navani became a Bondsmith and showed him into the Spiritual Realm, and tells Kaladin to prove himself a worthy disciple by helping Szeth complete his pilgrimage. He will speak again only then. His eyes blaze, and he is gone.

Kaladin packs the flute, the music papers and his sphere by Szeth's banked fire, and reminds himself that ideas are not true just because they enter his head. The dark brain still wants him to believe nothing changes; he refuses to let it win. The day's title: *THE END OF Day Two.*