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Continuing Dalinar's pilgrimage through the Spiritual Realm vision anchored on Shalash's ribbon. Dalinar hovers in the dugout doorway as Jezrien and Ishar talk over the fire and Chana paces behind them, while Vedel sits drawing a lattice of fine bright lines between her fingers — a thing Dalinar reads as pre-Radiant Bondsmithing. They are deciding to go east, leave Battar in charge of farming the mud, and answer Makibak's troubles. Dalinar — playing Kalak — agrees, then fishes. *You and Ishar are planning something without me*; can he have it in writing? They stare at him blankly. *What words are these?* Storms — they do not yet have writing; the spren-bond is translating for him. Ishar insists his idea is *an idea of gods* and cannot be rushed.

The drape rustles and a much younger Shalash — sixteen or seventeen — steps in. *Why am I not invited?* Jezrien tries to placate her, calls her *my precious fur*, Vedel reminds her gently that they are not eternal — the powers changed them, but they grow. Ash tears the red ribbon from her hair, flings it to the floor, and storms out: *sixty years as a child is enough.* The ribbon was Dalinar's anchor for this vision. It is going to start coming apart.

East of the Plains, Venli settles on a worn stone to hear Thude's *Song of the Beasts* — sung to the Rhythm of the Lost, framed in the voice of the chasmfiends themselves. Their thoughts ran in emotions rather than narrative; they lived peacefully on these hills until the small things with the metal nails began killing them. The chasmfiends took the killings as a challenge to dominance and fought back. Then came the day, harder to hear, when the report came in that the small things were killing the *young*. The song eulogises pupating cubs at length. The remaining chasmfiends — some fifty — eventually concluded these strange small predators must in fact be the dominant kind, and offered the listeners, on their retreat from the Plains, a truce. They were never food; they were rivals to live beside.

Afterward Venli presses Thude on whether the beasts can fight Fused, whether the listeners can keep dodging Odium's notice forever — *gods do not like being embarrassed*, Jaxlim says softly. She floats joining the humans. Bila joins Thude to refuse: the humans murdered them, and Venli herself led the slaughter with forms of power. Their independence defines their souls. Venli mostly agrees but smarts at being ignored again, takes a breath, and lets Timbre walk her toward Peace. Jaxlim gathers her into a long embrace; Timbre picks up the Love rhythm; Venli savours it.

She cannot leave the questions alone. She walks up to a large chasmfiend, stares it in the eye, and demands *why*. Why pupate only on the Plains? It shares the memory — climbing onto a plateau, growing past its own carapace, following *a thousand powerful songs sung by fragments of light in the ground*, then power flooding it from sky and stone. *By songs*, the stones whisper to her. She remembers what Urithiru's rock once told her and asks the obvious question. Why has everyone always fought so hard over this barren broken expanse? What broke it? Why did Odium send Nergaoul — the Thrill — to dominate the Alethi occupation of it? The stones seem to know, but before they can answer, the chasmfiends sing — a highstorm is near.

Outside Jezrien's dugout, Navani watches her husband vanish back inside and crouches with Gav, who is frightened. *It's a place where everything pretends with us*, she tells him. She calls out to the Wind. The Wind answers — this was her time, her era; she is no longer worshipped, the storm is worshipped instead. *Is what my husband wishes to do valid? Possible?* *Both, but there are burdens to be borne.* If the Bondsmith wishes to become Honor, it will hurt. She also volunteers — to Navani's alarm — that she *prepares in case it does not*. She has charges: the spren. The spren find their own champion. *A champion for the wind itself.*

Back inside, Dalinar picks up random objects, frantic for the next anchor, when a word cuts through: *Nale gave me a mark of debt.* Jezrien said it. Every Herald in the vision has been accounted for except Nale and Taln, both Makabaki — and *Makibak* is exactly where the party is going. Jezrien produces a small scratched stone disc — an ox-debt token marking a larger promise. Dalinar feels the Connection thrumming through it. The Stormfather begs him not to do it: *it might reveal me.* Dalinar genuinely regrets it, snatches the disc, dodges Chana's tackle on instinct, and bursts from the unravelling hovel. He hooks an arm around Navani at the firepit, scoops up a crying Gav with the other hand, and in the chaotic darkness that follows the disc forms his anchor to the next point in the journey.