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Shallan leaves Adolin under the wedding arch — the cruel thing women do in stories — once she has acknowledged that none of the figures around her are real: not the Dalinar crying out, not Navani, not the giggling pastiche of Wit in the corner, not even the Adolin who took her hand. The real ones are elsewhere. The one woman who is not figment, she chases through the high halls of Urithiru until she corners her in an empty sunlit room with both hands pressed to the window glass as if to push through it.

Chana is a wreck. She begs forgiveness she will not accept, clawing at her own face — *I wanted a family, I wanted … so selfish, so selfish* — until Shallan realises that she, the daughter, is the well one here. She kneels. She tells her mother she cannot take responsibility for what other people do, even what Odium's puppets do. She tells her that what she did to her was monstrous and that she will need to be watched and stopped from harming others — and then, freely, *I forgive you.* Chana does not believe she deserves it. Shallan gives it anyway. Pattern and Testament arrive at the edge of the room; the Herald tells her daughter she is in good hands, that she died again on Braize a few months ago and felt her pulling, that the souls of the dead singers hunt her now, and that she is looking for Taln and will not break this time. *Do not trust any of us, except for Taln.* She hugs her daughter and dissolves into shifting smoke. Testament points: Odium is here. The vision shatters.

Dalinar screams into the chaos. The Honor inside him cooperates with Odium now, both telling him men cannot be trusted, both forcing replay after replay of the failures he has not earned the right to lay down — Gavilar dying, Elhokar never finding his uncle. The chaos resolves into a small stone cell hewn by Shardblade, four beds, a heavy metal door, light dimmed in its sconce. He recognises the room before he sees the occupants. The second bed holds a boy with a face he does not know — *Daddy? Grampa?* — Gav. The third holds Evi. Her bright blond hair. Her tear-streaked makeup. The dress he last saw on her burned corpse. This is Rathalas, on the night that he will burn the Rift down around her.

Odium means this to be the moment that breaks him; Dalinar recognises the trap and refuses it. He steadies. He breathes. *My husband is a good man,* Evi insists. *Maybe,* he answers. *He's trying.* A Shardblade slides down through the doorframe outside. He flips Gav's bed for a shelter, hands the boy to Evi, and steps out to catch the burning oil-barrel coming through the door and hurl it back like a siege engine into the next one, sealing the entry in flame. Through the fire he meets his own red-eyed younger self on the ledge above the burning city. He does not punch him. He turns away, finds Kadash among the troops, and gives new orders: archers down, the men below to let people pass, every soldier on the rim to put out fires and pull the Rifters out. This is no longer a retribution. It is a rescue. *Which of us,* he asks the officer, *do you want to be the real Dalinar?* Kadash runs to obey.

The Blackthorn steps into his path. *You cannot ignore me. I am you.* *Yes,* Dalinar answers. *And no.* He touches him, and for an instant the two are one, and he pours into his younger self every pain and every understanding of who he has had to become. The effigy falls to its knees with eyes alight, awake. *Now what you said is true.* A vision-cast Sadeas charges in to demand what he thinks he's doing. Dalinar punches him through the Plate helm. That one feels very good. Odium mutters that none of this is real, that this is theatre — and warns that the power of Honor is watching, and has just been shown that men disobey orders and so do not deserve it. The vision shatters; Gav is lost again.

Then a voice across the tempest — old, accented, half-remembered — recites the question about *the most important words a man can say,* and the answer he was given long ago: that one cannot choose the destination of a life, only the path; that what matters is not where the journey ends but how it is walked; that callused feet and a back strong from its weight and eyes kept open are the substance of a life. *Nohadon?* The voice fades. A shadow as tall as a mountain rises and falls across him, and speaks with Taravangian's voice. The piece Dalinar has been missing snaps into place. Taravangian is the new Odium. *You could have been spared this,* the god says. *My predecessor offered to take your pain. You refused.* Of every soul who could have held that power — even the man he himself once was — Dalinar can think of none worse.

He looks down and sees a golden line of light running out of his own chest into the chaos. The line is his own retained pain — the unique misery of having loved people and caused their deaths. Odium thought it would crush him; he takes hold of it instead as a lifeline and drags himself along it on hands and knees while Taravangian coaxes and threatens behind. The line ends in a small stone cell like a monastery cell for the unhinged. In the corner, huddled and shaking, weeping into the floor, is the Stormfather — shrunken to the size of a frail bearded old man. *You liar,* Dalinar hisses, and watches his own anger evaporate.

He kneels. He puts a hand on the spren's shoulder. *You feel it too. That's what led me to you, isn't it?* The Stormfather admits that, yes — he remembers what Honor did, he carries the whole life of the dead god in him, and the failings are his too. Dalinar asks to be shown, and meets the spren's refusal with patience: he cannot take the pain, but he can help carry it; understanding has never led to hatred. The Stormfather touches his hand. A new vision begins. In this one, Dalinar will see the life of a god. THE END OF Day Eight.