(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Using the small engraved stone disc as his anchor, Dalinar pulls Navani and Gav from the Spiritual Realm churn into a new vision — a windswept warcamp on the eastern side of the mountains, decades after the dugout. The encampment is full of hide tents and stone-knappers patiently chipping arrowheads with leather pads. There are no wagons, no permanent buildings, almost no women. Dalinar sees Shalash now grown — a young woman with a spear — and Ishar walking with Jezrien as they look in modern paintings, and understands what day this is. The day they became immortal. He checks his clock and realises the disc cost him almost no time between visions, and starts thinking already about the longer hop to come.

Renarin wakes alone in a hogshide tent. Glys tells him they missed the vision he was aiming at and that his father is outside; he gropes for grounding by feeling the rough rug under his slippers. Ishar storms in with Chana and addresses him as *Vedel* — *can you do what I asked?* Renarin forces out the words to play along while Chana presses Ishar one last time about his plan — *Jezrien doesn't want to be a deity.* Ishar admits, more frightened than imperious, that he is terrified of aging into senility across a thousand years; that they brought their people to a *cursed world*; that he will fix things.

Then a Veden-looking woman in green slips in and hums softly. *Rlain?* — Rhythms, picked up before words. Rlain is wearing Pailiah's body and would rather be back in his own carapace. Renarin tries his Surge: not Lightweaving, something else. He cups Stormlight, breathes out a turning sphere, asks the Light *nicely*, and the shadows cast from Rlain form an image — a singer standing astride human and singer worlds, half-uniform and half-robe, split down the middle. Rlain sees the same image. *Tumi calls me the Bridger of Minds*, he says. The two settle on using the soul-light to identify any other intruders in the vision — Shallan, or the Ghostbloods — without revealing themselves. Their first contact, however, is something quieter: when Rlain grips Renarin by the upper arm to steady himself in an unfamiliar body, Renarin feels an unexpected warmth — an answer to something he had long stopped expecting.

Outside, the sky darkens. People look up rather than running for cover. *The Wind* speaks in Dalinar's and Navani's minds — *hiding isn't necessary; Honor modulated the storm where his faithful prayed.* Rain falls warm and slow; the men laugh and point at windspren; Gav relaxes for the first time since they arrived and tells them he feels warm. Dalinar recognises the warmth from somewhere deep, a vibrating tone like a polishing cloth on a sword. Gav asks why the Wind is kind. *We are what Adonalsium left*, she says, *and even the storm, before Honor, could be pled with at times.* The Stormfather always told Dalinar the storm simply *is*; the Wind tells him otherwise. *Nothing on Roshar merely is. Everything thinks. Everything has a choice.*

Jezrien convenes the leaders. A scout — *Nale*, dark-skinned with a birthmark — reports that Jezrien's old friend *El* lives, having joined the Fused. *Not only are our enemies being reborn*, Nale says, *they are recruiting the strongest of the singers to immortality.* The humans cannot match it without something equivalent. Chana reads it as their god's final betrayal; Jezrien reads it as *they* having betrayed *him* — that the being they served was always Odium, never Passion. Navani uses *Wit's* mouth to fish for dates. *Forty-three long years of war.*

The leaders move into a larger tent. Dalinar counts: seven of the ten Heralds plus Wit, with Pailiah seated cross-legged on the floor holding a globe of Light above her hand — Lightweaving. *Nale hisses* — *you swore you wouldn't use the powers, Althman.* Dalinar realises Nale is the one Herald who never wanted any of this, and that Taln is missing from the room. He also realises, watching the Honorblade tip of the plan come into view, that he can use the Blade about to be forged in his own hand as the anchor that will carry him all the way to the death of Honor. Navani catches her breath as the last Herald is revealed — *Vedel, Keeper of the keys. The keys of immortality. It's happening.*

Jezrien turns to Vedel — to Renarin, in her body, who has just stepped into the lantern light. *It is time. Is he ready?* And the whole room waits for him to answer.