POV: dyel
Summary
Dyel, a twelve-year-old Iriali shopkeeper's daughter in Iri, serves tea to three odd foreigners who claim to be from "the East" and are not. A tall, dark-skinned man in a long white coat with spectacles in his pocket (Baon); a short, scowling, bald one in cloak and colored robes despite the heat (Galladon); and a quiet Shin man with a scarred head (Demoux). She hangs in the doorway and watches the people pass on the street — singer "Owners" with red eyes and carapace among them — fitting each new sight into her private inventory of experiences for the One. Her mother does not believe; she does, for her murdered grandfather Ym's sake.
Demoux tips her a full broam to answer a question, then asks whether she has ever seen prismatic lights move along a wall without a source. The question terrifies her — that is exactly what Uma, her mother's spren, looks like — and she runs. Her mother returns from an errand, finds three strangers cornering her child, and manifests the silver Shardblade she has kept quiet about since it appeared in her hands a few months earlier. Baon draws a strange metal-tube weapon; Galladon cracks a sphere and starts to call up glowing symbols.
Mother accuses Baon of being the tall Makabaki man who killed her father, the one she has spent months hunting. Uma slides up the wall and rules him out: she had watched the Herald Nale kill Ym, and knows that face. The standoff collapses into bickering — Demoux only wanted "to study" the spren, Galladon keeps telling him to stop saying it that way, Baon resents being told he resembles Nale. Mother, satisfied, then produces a sealed envelope a many-ringed visiting "healer" had left with her months ago, telling her she would know whom to give it to. Baon opens it: only Hoid's signature and a crude obscene drawing. Mother names the prior visitor as the Trickster Aspect; the foreigners groan at having missed him again. Baon warns that the city is about to become chaotic, and the three go.
Outside, shouts rise from the bay. Dyel and her mother climb to their rooftop and find Cusicesh the Protector standing in the water at the wrong hour, breaking strict tradition to wave his long arms wide over the city. A radiant pillar of light tears the sky open over the bay. Mother understands first — this is Honor's gateway — and sends Dyel running for the travel packs every good Iriali household keeps against this very call. Cusicesh then speaks, his voice shaking the city soul-deep: he is to be the people's guide for the Fifth Journey. The Long Trail is moving again. The Iriali are summoned to the Fifth Land.
Boats row out to meet the gateway. Dyel and her mother join the leaders of their people crossing into the place of shadows, where caravans are already being assembled to march. Nearby in the press Dyel spies the same three foreigners — Demoux complaining that this is odd behavior for a perpendicularity of this nature. Other portals, she hears, have opened in every major city of Iri. Clutching her travel pack, she says a quiet goodbye to her shop, her city, and the planet. The Iriali are leaving Roshar, this time forever.