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Shallan stabs at Formless in the cold cavern outside the prison, and the figure wearing her own face barely catches the strike one-handed an inch from the eye. Adolin's grappling drills come back to her so fluidly the grace startles her — she hooks the ankle, rides the fall, lands on top, and bears the anti-Stormlight tip down until it kisses skin. The Light burns away the Lightweaving only where it touches, and Iyatil's masked face appears beneath the persona. *Quick,* Shallan thinks, *before Mraize reacts.* She plunges the dagger into the *babsk*'s eye. Iyatil inhales Stormlight by reflex to heal — and the two opposed Lights flash inside her head. She screams once and goes limp. The mask comes off in Mraize's hands. Beneath is a middle-aged woman with Shin features, far less alien without it.

*I'm free,* Mraize whispers, and asks how she knew to look for Iyatil in that shape. The pieces click into place for Shallan: she had beaten Formless weeks ago, so the persona lingering this whole expedition wasn't hers at all. And the seon in her communications box — the spren that had served as the Ghostbloods' messenger since the tower fight — had been with her every time she planned Formless, every confession to Adolin and Wit. Of course they had played her. The division of labour fell out: Mraize hunted Dalinar's visions for the prison; Iyatil watched her, under perfect cover.

Mraize kneels above the corpse and, while pointing accusingly at Shallan with one hand, deliberately closes Iyatil's remaining eye with the other — and palms a second anti-Stormlight knife from her belt sheath. The first is spent and dull now. A glow at the corpse turns out to be her inkspren crawling out, wounded, growing to full size as it slinks away. *Do we have to do this?* Shallan asks. *You just killed my* babsk, he says, soft. *And freed you.* It does not move him. He is bound by his honour, and her infractions can no longer be overlooked. Pattern crosses to her side despite her warning — that storming knife could end him in a heartbeat. Her heart trembles at the idea of hurting Mraize anyway, the man who mentored her, brutal as he is, and she realises her old fears were never really about Jasnah or Navani. They were about *him.* She offers a Lightweaving — Mraize in traveller's gear, sun yellow, Shin-style soil under his boots, a Lightweaver patch on the shoulder — and tells him he could be their agent to other worlds, the thing he has always wanted. He stares at it with what looks like genuine longing. Then his expression hardens. She will come with him, he says, and either Master Thaidakar will absolve her or she will die. *He won't let you join,* Veil whispers inside her. *He's too afraid of you now.* Radiant asks if it is time to take over. Shallan tells her no. She will do this one herself. But she might need Pattern's help.

Across the world in Azimir, Yanagawn grips a sword in sweaty hands and tries not to look afraid. He has neither helm nor shield — Adolin's flat rule for going into a fight — and he leads a force of ten against hundreds. The enemy has not charged. Colot reads the line: soldiers on strict orders not to engage, Regals hauling them back. *They're waiting for something,* Kushkam confirms. Yanagawn runs through Adolin's four ways to win when outnumbered: terrain, soldiers, a turning of the tides. None of them apply. It would take an act of god or Kadasix to —

The throne-room doors explode outward and a body sails into the hallway wall, bleeding orange. Adolin Kholin strides out in Plate painted blue, the joints glowing with flame-orange light, plants his left heel into the body, and crushes both the gemheart and the rib cage. The eyes go out in a puff of Voidlight. He turns through the resplendent helm. *Your Majesty,* he says, the Blade of Memories over one shoulder, *I have reclaimed your Shardblade for you.*

On the stone field of Shinovar, Kaladin stumbles to a halt as Szeth's column of light still hangs in the air. *I am the Law.* The final ideal of the Skybreakers — but Szeth has not completed his quest, and so far as either of them knows the oaths come in sequence. *Can you skip an oath?* Kaladin demands of Syl. She has no idea — humans never make sense, and barely any of them even float. Kaladin reaches Ishar just as the Herald lifts a hand to shield his eyes — a sheet of Stormlight forms from his palm, almost solid, blocking the glare. *Ishar,* Kaladin says, *we need to talk while you see clearly.* The Herald turns, lowers the shield. His own Stormlight is burning in his eyes so brightly that the pupils are lost. He calls Dalinar an imitation Bondsmith and a foolish child, says he was fooled by his clever lies once and not again, that he has prepared countermeasures, that he always learns. Then he strides forward, completely unfazed by the new oath and the light it released.