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Navani trudges through Shinovar mud toward the Ashyn portal, hands on her hips, dissatisfied. Jasnah's Elsecaller experiments have produced no portal of their own; here she will at least observe. She catalogues what she sees: the portal is roughly eighty feet wide, level with the mud, held open by Ishi'Elin on the far side with arms out as if physically pushing it apart — *Elsecalling rather than Bondsmithing*, she notes, evidence that the Heralds practised other Surges before settling into their later roles. The seam itself is a six-inch silvery tunnel; refugees fuzz in, fuzz out. Flocks of chickens explode through twenty-five feet up; new arrivals come through in furs — Shin. She still feels Connected to someone watching from elsewhere in the Spiritual Realm — not her father, not the Sibling (whom she also cannot reach).

A faceless puppet of Wit sits in the mud at her elbow, his face *melted away*, mumbling about *infinite recursion* and *synthetic consciousness* in self-pitying loops. He translates the king's warning that the portal is dangerous, then bickers with her about whether she counts as dangerous to a vision of dead people. He confirms that pushing through the portal will dissolve the vision: this construct is tied to Roshar; the Spiritual Realm only renders what her mind can hold. He cheerfully reports that her husband has just turned down the Stormfather's offer to send them home.

Navani approaches Jezrien with hands open, bows; he watches, thoughtful. His darker-skinned daughter Shalash slips around him and laces fingers with Navani — eight others will one day stand with these two in the Oathpact. The Wind sighs across them. *I do not know*, it whispers, when she asks for help home; *your husband decided to stay. He is both wise and foolish. The only path forward is through time. You must find the day Honor died.* That day lies five thousand years in the future. Navani re-frames her plan: jump in shorter steps, anchored to people and things that will reappear. She asks for an anchor to the Oathpact's founding; the Wind suggests Shalash's ribbon. The girl unties it from her hair and presses it into Navani's palm; the hills are already burning into Stormlight. The vision dissolves around them, but the ribbon stays.

Adolin, a few hours' sleep behind him, walks out of his blackout tent in Azimir to discover the Azish reinforcements have been delayed — a mystery raiding force has hit them; the column is now at least two days out. The Fused-fortress at the centre of the singer line still holds. He decides on the work-of-a-commander he always means to do and never quite gets to in time: visiting the wounded. The Azish field hospital is the best he has seen — boiled instruments, white linen, painspren on the floor, uncorrupted mistspren light on the wall from Rahel, the young Truthwatcher who works it. He moves bed to bed, joking soldiers down off anxietyspren and promising further Regrowth when Rahel can spare it. One missing-arm jokes about a future on a bridge crew. Adolin wonders whether Bridge Four and Bridge Thirteen grasp how mythic they have become in the Alethi military.

He breaks off mid-aisle when he recognises a thin woman with Azish colouring and Shin eyes sitting beside the next bed. *Ash*. Shalash, a Herald of the Almighty, sits vigil over the mountain of a man in the bed — Talenel, the Bearer of Agonies, murmuring his mantra. *We are an afterthought*, she tells Adolin: his father brought them in hoping their wisdom would rub off. *We have no wisdom left. Only madness and grief.* She asks him, flatly, whether he is worth the price paid for him on a distant world by a man who only wanted to keep his horses. *I don't know*, Adolin says. *Time will tell.* He moves on, unnerved, reassuring Rahel that her work is the work of a field medic and that she is doing well.

Outside, Kushkam is sending word via spanreed: enemy quick-jab, mostly disengaged, casualties low — his gut says they will try a *Castle Down*, a deliberately-syncopated assault meant to catch defenders winding down for sleep. Adolin agrees and predicts the next strike within an hour and a half. He notices, with embarrassment, that he has forgotten his young scribe's name; she gives it again — Makana — and he commits it this time. He has a promise to keep with the emperor. He sets a few quiet orders and walks toward the brightest pavilion in the night.