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Moving through the dark halls of Urithiru with her guards, Shallan finds a folded card stuck to the corridor wall with weevilwax. Inside: the Ghostbloods' triangle, and her real name. Not Veil's. Shallan sucks the lantern dry in a single breath and looks at the bright doorway nearby. *Run where?* *I am no longer a child who hides in her room when the shouting comes.* She walks in. Mraize waits at a glassless window — twisted and scarred and somehow refined — and tells her plainly that he traced her false identity only because her Surgebinding had to manifest publicly to save the army. *Veil is the false identity, Mraize. I am me.* He inspects her with eyes that could drill stone. *I think not.* She is one of them, he reminds her; the Ghostbloods look after their own. He killed Jasnah only because she had been assassinating their members. He should have guessed Shallan Davar — her family has a long history in these events. *I will not help you.* *Curious. You should know that I have your brothers.* Her family's grounds have been seized by a passing army in the Jah Keved war; he has rescued the boys and is bringing them to her as a gift. The Davar family still owes him one Soulcaster, *broken*. *How convenient that you, by my estimations, are one, little knife.* Not blackmail, he tells her. *Let Shallan Davar be a Radiant, conformist and noble. Let Veil come to us. And let her find truth.* He disappears into the hallway.

Drained, she walks to the chamber Pattern chose for her, where Adolin waits with his wrist wrapped and his bruises starting to purple — *which is fetching in its own right* — and they joke each other into a soft peace and a kiss that hurts him. He shuts the door behind her on his promise that nobody disturb the Lady Radiant. Inside, she notices the faded square on the bare stone wall and recognises with sudden horror exactly where she is standing: this is the spot where the picture hung in her father's room back in Jah Keved. *Mmm. It is time.* *No.* The room reshapes around her against her will — white carpet, painted blue walls, furniture, two corpses. She walks the illusion to her father's strongbox behind the painting, takes out the key, opens the lock. Inside, hilt toward her, point pushed through the back of the strongbox, is a small Shardblade. *This was you.* *Mmm. Yes.* *Father took you from me, and tried to hide you in here. Of course, that was useless. You vanished as soon as he closed the strongbox. He wasn't thinking clearly. Neither of us were.*

She turns. Red carpet, once white. Her mother's friend lies bleeding from an arm wound that did not kill him. She rolls the second body over — blue-and-gold dress, red hair spilling out — and confronts a skull with eyes burned out. *Why did she try to kill me, Pattern?* The memory comes back. Her mother and the friend arrived to confront her father after learning what Shallan could do. Her mother named her *one of them*. The friend pinned her father; her mother took the knife and came for Shallan. And then a sword in Shallan's hands. *He let everyone believe he had killed her in a rage, when I was the one who actually killed them. He lied to protect me. That secret destroyed him. It destroyed our entire family.* *I hate you,* she whispers. *I know. Eventually, you will kill me, and you will have your revenge.* *I don't want revenge. I want my family.* She buries her head in her arms as the illusion bleeds white smoke and goes.

From a rattling coach in Dalinar's emptying warcamp, Amaram writes hurriedly to Restares: the reports of Voidbringers fought on the plateaus and a new storm unleashed mean the Sons of Honor have, after long burden, *been successful*. Their work has always been to crisis the world — to return the Heralds and restore the dominance of the Church. Many will die. He hands the letter off, slips hooded into the monastery complex, and rounds to the back of the building that holds the insane. He cuts a hole in the wall with his Shardblade and gathers the bowed, whispering Talenelat up to take him to Urithiru. A masked figure with a blowgun puffs a dart from the opening. Talenelat's hand snaps up and snatches it from the air inches from Amaram's face; the other catches the blowpipe's last shot. The Ghostbloods weren't trying to kill the Herald. They were trying to kill Amaram. He chases the masked figure and fails. When he turns back, Talenelat is standing tall, straight-backed, dark brown eyes startlingly lucid, inspecting the dart. Then the Herald drops both darts, sits down, and resumes the mantra. Amaram cannot get him to respond again. He loads him into the coach.

Somewhere on empty rock east of the Plains — the Frostlands, maybe — Szeth opens his eyes. Blasphemy. He hears water dripping and feels the sun on his face. *I died. I died!* A man stands in front of him in a crisp black-and-silver uniform, dark Makabaki skin, a pale hooked-crescent mark on his right cheek, slipping a glowing fabrial back into his coat pocket. *I waited until you crashed to the ground, until you were broken and mangled, your soul cut through, dead for certain. Then I restored you* — done before the brain dies, like a drowned man brought back by the right ministrations. *Who are you?* *You spend this long obeying the precepts of your people and religion, yet you fail to recognise one of your gods?* The crescent. *Nin,* Szeth whispers. *The one they call Nalan, or Nale, here. Herald of Justice.* Nin nods. He has been watching. He has watched Szeth destroy himself in the name of order, watched him keep his word with the only genuine beauty in the world. *I doubt I have ever found a man more worthy of the Skybreakers than you.* Szeth asks only to die. *Is that what you wish most? I will give it to you, if it is your honest desire.* The screams of those he killed wait for him in the dark. *No. The Voidbringers have returned. I was right, and my people were wrong.* *You were banished by petty men with no vision. I will teach you the path of one uncorrupted by sentiment.* And the Shin hold the rest of the Honorblades — so Nin tosses Szeth a sheathed sword to face them with. It skids across the rock to him. The Blade is black, an inch of it out of the metal sheath, trailing what looks like Stormlight made dark. *Hello*, a cheerful voice says in Szeth's mind. *Would you like to destroy some evil today?*