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Shallan wakes inside the body of a dying singer soldier on the Shin grass — blood on her side, broken carapace under her fingers, the Desolation battle moved on around her — and for the first time hears Pattern speaking inside her mind, a side effect of their strengthening bond. Glys apologises through him: he could not always pick the body, and meant to put her in a singer so she could understand Mishram. He offers to pull her out, but she sees the Unmade approaching across the field, and tells him to wait.

Ba-Ado-Mishram in this era is the dark, hand-pawed shape from Shallan's sketchbooks, an unmistakably *singer* face of red smoke. She kneels over another wounded singer, breathes darkness around her, and tells her *live, heal* — *he does not love us, so we must love ourselves.* She does the same for Shallan, who climbs to her feet beside two other singers the Unmade has just brought back. They talk past her about the war: the humans cannot be coexisted with, only beaten, or they will keep killing. Shallan crosses the field after Mishram and realises that, were she to live in one of these two armies, she might prefer the singer one — there is a freedom in their ranks she has never noticed before.

Mishram cannot heal the next wounded soldier — a dying human. *I would not.* But she leans down and sings him into peace, Rhythm of Peace under her breath, until he goes still. Shallan weeps. *Is there no way to stop this?* she asks. Mishram tells her he will never allow it — the wars *serve him,* preparing his armies for a future even she does not yet understand. The humans must be dominated first; *then, perhaps.*

Then the song twists. The smoky face distorts; the voice hisses *I see you, Lightweaver,* and threatens to pull her bones from their sockets. The Mishram of memory is wearing the present Mishram's eyes. Glys yanks Shallan free as she tries one last Lightweaving — and back on Renarin's scaffold she finds her illusion has held: a Lightweaving of *Shallan herself,* standing in the vision, no longer freezing when she stops directing it. From outside she puppets it through a clearer panel in the glass. Glys glides up and ventriloquises Mishram's replies. Shallan asks the real question: *why is Odium afraid of you? Could you actually replace him?*

The vision stills. Mishram's essence becomes paint-smoke and many faces, and from all of them at once she demands *how do you know? How do you know?* — *I've been there,* Shallan whispers. *I killed those who created me as well.* The darkness flows forward and the hands become real and reaching, and then Rlain steps in front of Shallan — tall as a tower in the armour of a singer and the uniform of an Alethi — and Renarin takes his hand for support. Shallan, who has trained on eyelines for sketching, is certain Mishram is staring at the gesture. *We are children of Sja-anat,* Glys tells her. *Help us find you,* Rlain says, *before our enemies do.* The Unmade fades back into the paint-smoke and is gone.

Outside the vision, Pattern points: in the shadow of a hill, Mraize crouches with a warping dagger, watching the Shallan illusion — visibly preparing to strike, and visibly hesitating. Before she can read why, the vision ends. The ground beneath her darkens. Glys tells her he has noticed; Tumi promises they will find her again. They scatter. Shallan is cast into the shifting chaos alone.

Inside the besieged dome at Azimir, Adolin finishes his evening sparring with Yanagawn and sets up the towers board for the more important lesson. He walks the emperor through force-multipliers — that a defensive line on high ground can hold against a larger army — and watches him turn the apparently losing position into a winning one. They talk through Valithar's Dictates on the three named ways a smaller force overcomes a larger one (terrain, leadership, chance), and Adolin teases a fourth he is not yet ready to name. Gezamal, the swap-in Imperial Guard captain, helps; when Yanagawn addresses him directly his back goes rigid in protocol panic.

Yanagawn asks what Adolin believes in the wake of Dalinar's rewriting of religion. Adolin has no clean answer; he feels Maya's comfort from a distance and lets it sit. Then the food arrives on aluminium plates and forks, and Yanagawn explains — to Adolin's widening eyes — that this is what they call *starmetal,* hoarded for emperors, lately used as panelling against the Fused in his bedchambers. Adolin points out that it blocks Shardblades; Yanagawn gives orders to strip the regalia for the armorers. Hmask rotates onto duty, and through Yanagawn's Thaylen finally tells Adolin what he has been waiting to say: at the Battle of Thaylen Field, in a collapsing building with a thunderclast battering it, Adolin saved his son. *Me. Son. You.* He presses his forehead to Adolin's hand and returns to his post.

Then two scribes from the spanreed hub burst in with news for Noura. Adolin follows, pushes past the guards, and finds her at a writing desk surrounded by anxietyspren and a still-writing pen. He guesses before she tells him: the reinforcements will not arrive in time. The relief column has been turned aside. Emul and Tashikk — the very subject nations the coalition has bled to protect — have formally seceded, taking Odium's offer of *some small measure of autonomy* over the gamble of the deadline. He has cut the imperium into pieces and given the smaller fragments enough to walk away. *He is isolating us,* Adolin tells Noura in the still air. *He's looking to suffocate us.* For the first time in his life he draws betrayalspren — snapping strings expanding outward. Three and a half more days; no help is coming.