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Between visions, Shallan, Rlain, and Renarin are dropped into an idyllic Spiritual-Realm rendering of a Shattered Plains warcamp built from Rlain's childhood memory. Skyeels dance in a sky split into three faintly offset colours like a woodblock print. Rlain and Renarin laugh over a chasm; Shallan sits with Pattern on a broken wall and asks how Formless came back. Pattern does not know. Humans do not make sense even when they are sane. She has banished her, she repeats. *I don't need her.* She is afraid she now lives every day knowing her mind could backslide. Pattern makes her repeat what Wit told her — *I don't deserve it. What was done to me is not my fault.* She decides that Formless is not another coping persona like Veil or Radiant but the version of her that would give up: the version that would become what Mraize wants.

Ba-Ado-Mishram's face glares down at her from the clouds. Testament has been staring at it all along. Renarin cries out — there is a face in the chasm stones too. Pattern loudly admires the larger one; he has decided he *likes style*, it is a Lightweaver trait at which they are very good. They retreat into a crem-dripped stone building where Rlain grew up; the face is in three of the wall-stones here too. Rlain tells them about raising axehounds alone after his parents died in a flood when he was nearly seven (singers mature faster, he notes, in something like reassurance), and Renarin takes the line about *getting too used to being alone* with quiet recognition. The three agree to try again at the Ghostblood assassins — Shallan is still the only practised actor among them, and they have a numerical advantage they need to keep. The Anti-Light dagger is the only weapon she can rely on bringing; Rlain and Renarin will scavenge from whichever vision they enter.

Across the world, hours after another long assault on Azimir, Adolin walks unarmored across the cooling plaza alone. Tens of twinkling cookfires with their portable hearths spot the square, their flamespren bobbing. He is exhausted, missing Shallan and feeling old weight crash down: the mystery raiders harrying his reinforcements, Kholinar (his city, that he left burning), Sadeas (a highprince he murdered in a quiet hall and covered up, and would do again). He notices the wind off the plaza without knowing its name and wishes he did, for *everything has a name*.

Noura crosses the plaza in her patterned dark clothing to confront him. *Will you please cease your corruption of the Prime?* Adolin turns toward the wind and falls into parade rest. She lectures: the Prime sits and rules; *so long as the emperor is on his throne, Azimir stands.* Adolin presses past the slogan. *Yanagawn needs a friend.* She lists his attendants and minders, then concedes the loneliness. Adolin tells her he has lived that life and is grateful to the few he could trust. She does not back down. He throws Lift's account of Yanagawn's elevation at her — *picked as a convenient dupe for Szeth to murder* — and waits for her to break. She does not. She sets her jaw. *Yes. We did that to a boy. But the moment we elevated him he became my responsibility, my duty, my life. I would die for him.* Adolin believes her, and revises his estimate of her upward.

She tests him in return. *Tell me — in all honesty — the boy isn't still there inside that emperor.* Silence. She finally admits that he isn't a child any more, but rules her own line — it is not proper for an emperor to *walk into battle*. Adolin retorts that tradition is what scribes make. She rolls her eyes at the Alethi chauvinism; he refuses to be baited and asks her what she actually does not like about him. She tells him plainly: he walked away from his own throne. That degree of irresponsibility is concerning, *and ideas are more contagious than any disease.* She fears he will teach Yanagawn to do the same, and she has watched the previous Primes — *all excellent candidates on paper* — become shells. They cannot lose this one. Adolin offers his own answer: *if you keep him isolated, without friends, that will break him.* He tells her he has had the throne, in his way, and has walked away — *consider that, then ask yourself why I care.* *Because you've been there*, she whispers. He bows his head and walks off; she does not call him back. He counts that as a stalemate fought to, which is the same as winning.

*The end of Day Four.*