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Shallan, cast adrift in the Spiritual Realm after Odium noticed Mishram's recognition, wakes inside her own past. *That day. White carpet.* It almost takes her — and then she refuses, and the vision shifts. She is small. She is crouched in a corner of the manor, listening to her parents shout. She thinks of how often she has told herself the easy lie — *everything had been wonderful up until her mother's death* — and lets herself remember that there had also been bad years before. Her mother slams a door and stalks past her in the corridor, repeating into the air *I can't be like this. I'm not a soldier, I'm a homemaker. I can't. I can't.* Veil asks how they face this now that they remember. Shallan does not flinch. *I'm almost ready,* she tells her selves, *but we need a vision where I'm an adult.* For now, accept the memories.

She slips through the halls past her father, finds her brothers — all but Helaran — huddled under the back stairs. Jushu wiping his eyes. Wikim pretending he is not afraid. Balat turned to the wall. She takes a sphere from her pocket and starts a story — a wandering axehound, lost in big cities, mistaken for a king and crowned, silly and unfollowable. The elder Shallan inside the body does not steer; she lets the child do it, because the child knows what to do. Balat turns away from the wall and smiles. Jushu adds ideas. Wikim stops pretending. *When you're starving,* she thinks, *bread is a feast.* That night, tidying her room after the storm has passed, she finds a strange spiral on the wall. Testament has come. She sees clearly now, as an adult, what drew her: not the bedtime story but *the story she told herself,* the performance that she was happy and not terrified. The lie that let her shine when all the world was dark.

Renarin is in another body — his own, younger, at a Kholin feast where the fires have just been moved from open pits into hearths. Big, refined, refurbished court. He sits at the children's table because moving up means *making a choice,* and staying delays it. After the second course he slips out to find the privy and meets, as he met that night, the older lighteyes' sons passing firemoss in the corridor — boys whose parents joined late and whose anxieties have seeped down. They follow, taunt him, shove him against the wall, demanding to know if he thinks he is better than they are. As an adult he sees what he missed at the time: they were *afraid,* feeling out limits, expecting Dalinar to be ashamed of his sickly youngest son. *I remember you,* he whispers. *I will remember this for a long, long time.* Then he sweeps the lead boy's legs out from under him — the one move Zahel insisted was essential — and lets the others pin him against the wall while he watches himself feel for catharsis. There is none. *He was a Radiant now. He was supposed to be better than this.*

Then Adolin comes barrelling down the corridor at a run, trailing angerspren, threatening a duel — and the older boys flinch. Renarin loves him for it: the hero from a story, arriving at the first break in the clouds after a highstorm. Glys asks softly if this was why he wanted to wear Plate and become a soldier — to be like his brother. *No,* Renarin tells him. *I wanted to not need him.* He will always love Adolin for being there, and always quietly resent that he could not do it himself.

Rlain hums to the Rhythm of the Lost because the vision has put him with Eshonai. They are in Narak as it will never be again — open plateaus, no fortifications, low listener houses cobbled in among the ancient stone, the sky a clean blue above. Eshonai in Plate paces above their seats: *we're losing too many people; if we continue like this the humans will wear us down.* Thude proposes a dullform spy — *it is enough like slaveform that no human will notice,* and the humans let slaveform serve their meals and clean their rooms invisibly. Bila confirms it. *They are around all the time,* Eshonai agrees, remembering the human palace. *We're practically invisible to them.*

Thude volunteers first, and is refused because they cannot lose his prowess in battle. Bila tries, and Thude cannot lose her. Harvo is too valuable to farming. Tusa is essential for research. The room goes quiet. Rlain, adult inside the body, knows what is about to happen. *I'll do it,* he says, opening his eyes. They all look at him — and several seem to have forgotten he was there. *That's an excellent idea.* *You're perfect.* Not a single friend speaks against the choice. They had just been describing how parshmen were invisible to humans; the listeners do the same to him much of the time. They do not dislike him; they simply do not know him, and do not care to. Only Eshonai, as a general must, has any visible hesitation about sending him into danger; she names him a capable soldier with no warpair to lose, and approves the plan, beginning with a visit to a human lumber operation upriver. The path to Bridge Four begins here, in this meeting, with no one asking him to stay.