Chapter 138

And the existence of those several key people is the one thing that I myself have heard from the Wind. This singular truth, a nugget that I cannot yet explain.

“One is not enough. The change must come from many.”

—From Knights of Wind and Truth, page 237

S hallan dropped the expended knife, exhausted, falling to her knees beside Mraize’s corpse. It was lucky he hadn’t seen, at the last moment, that the tip of the real knife—with the anti-Light—had burned through her illusion. But she’d successfully kept his attention on her. Misdirection within misdirection. And it had worked. He was dead.

And she felt exhausted rather than triumphant.

Pattern bounced over, still wearing the Lightweaving that made him look like Shallan. A too-tall version of her, which was likely what had tipped Mraize off. Then Radiant was kneeling across the body from her. Blond, with a thicker neck, stronger muscles, and a calm smile.

“You did it all on your own, Shallan,” Radiant said. “You killed him yourself. You don’t need me to do that anymore, do you?”

“No,” Shallan whispered. “Thank you.”

Radiant nodded. She was the part of Shallan that had killed her mother, killed her father, and borne the weight of fighting. She’d emerged as a persona after Tyn’s death and formed into Radiant some weeks later—but as Veil had carried Shallan’s memories, Radiant had carried her violence.

“I know it hurts,” Radiant said, glancing at Mraize, whose dead face was frozen in a mask of surprise and agony.

“It does,” Shallan said. “But not … not because of what I did, but because of his decisions. I am not responsible for his bad choices … or the consequences of them.”

Radiant reached across, gripped Shallan on the shoulder, and squeezed.

Then they were one.

“Is that … it?” Pattern said in her voice. That was disorienting enough that she dismissed the illusion. Testament joined them. Quiet as always. “Shallan?” Pattern said. “Are you healed?”

“That’s not how it works,” she said, feeling so exceptionally tired. It had been … a very long day. “I will always have to fight my mind’s inclinations. It’s not that I’m healed, or even that Radiant is gone completely.” She stood up. “But I am better than I was.”

Mraize started glowing, then his skin rippled.

“Here,” she said, reaching down and helping to pull the wounded spren from his body: a bone-white Cryptic, with a head pattern that was all wrong. Loose loops like scribbles instead of geometric shapes.

“I …” the Cryptic said. “I am sorry. But I hate you. Mmmm … it is a strong hate.”

“You will have to deal with that,” Shallan said, inspecting the Cryptic’s left side, which had been burned away—leaving a hole where the arm and shoulder should have been. She glanced to Iyatil’s inkspren, who was radiant with colors to show its changed nature—and was huddling in the shadows nearby. “Is there a way to heal you?”

“I do not know,” the Cryptic said. “You burned away the part of us that is Stormlight, not the part that is Voidlight. I … I feel sad. And hurt. I do not want to talk to you.”

Shallan didn’t blame him. She looked to Pattern, who helped her get the wounded Cryptic to his feet. Perhaps if they brought them to Sja-anat, she could do something?

She started toward the room with the prison. In the fight, she’d almost forgotten it. As she drew near, she could barely make out something horrifying inside.

Renarin and Rlain with the gemstone raised high. Poised to drop it, shatter it, and release Mishram.

Oh, storms.

Nale, called Nalan’Elin, huddled on the ground and tried to stop existing.

It wasn’t that this darkness was new, but he’d … he’d been able to hide from it. Until Ishar stripped away his protections.

Now the full force of Nale’s failures, the murders he’d committed, overwhelmed him. He knew—his eyes squeezed shut yet leaking tears—that he would never escape this.

Sylphrena tried to claw her way toward Kaladin. She found it impossible to move. She could barely reach out, her very essence twisted in agony. She’d felt something like this before, in trying to empathize with Kaladin and people like him, but experiencing it like this was so, so different.

It made her feel completely alone.

“Know my pain,” Ishar was saying, though she barely heard. “As you feel it, let me have peace. To think.”

So, so alone. What had she ever done that had mattered? She felt a squeezing within her, rearranging her until she …

She wanted to not be. It wasn’t pain. It was the opposite of pain. It was a deep, terrible nothing.

It terrified her more than anything else ever had.

Szeth was exhausted.

How long was he expected to keep going? What was the point of all this fighting?

Each new thought was of how he’d failed. The eyes of someone he’d killed. Whispers in the darkness.

He was overwhelmed. Surrounded by darkness, such that he couldn’t see. Why did it all matter? Why had he tried so hard?

Couldn’t he just sleep for once?

Yet sleep seemed too easy an escape for one such as him.

Szeth?

The sword. Szeth ignored it.

Szeth, what is wrong?

Everything was wrong. It always would be. Szeth squeezed his eyes shut, curled up, and trembled.

Kaladin lay there, grappling with the darkness.

“I made a fool’s choice, didn’t I?” Ishar said. “To think that any mortal could ever deserve to be a Herald. I must move forward with another plan. Dissolve the Oathpact. Yes, dissolve it, bring the spren through to this realm, and make them my army.”

Thoughts intruded and stabbed Kaladin’s mind, like spears in his flesh, making him scream his flaws. Those he’d lost. Those he’d failed. Storms, he hated this part.

Still, there was nothing to do about it. So Kaladin raised his head and looked up.

So often, it began with just looking up. That was the first step in clawing free of this darkness. With eyes blurred by tears, he thought he saw someone … standing there in front of him. Kaladin himself.

Young Kaladin, standing up to volunteer to join the military because his brother had been taken.

Beside him, Squadleader Kaladin, on the battlefield and sheltering the new recruits.

Then Bridgeman Kaladin, forcing his friends to carry a bridge on its side.

Captain Kaladin, who stood to protect Elhokar against even a friend.

Radiant Kaladin, battling Szeth in the sky.

He looked at all the dead men he’d been, and realized something. He admired them. Each shared that singular attribute: the willingness to protect and help those around them.

That is me, he thought. That is who I want to be.

Wit had told him to find out who he was when he wasn’t in the middle of a crisis. When fighting wasn’t demanded of him. Well, this was who he wanted to be. Was that terrible? The darkness inside him said it was, that he’d end up going in the same circles as before. That darkness … in it, he felt the burdens of the nine remaining Heralds. The people who had sacrificed so much for the world, and lost themselves because of it. Was that a warning? That he shouldn’t try?

Kaladin fought that feeling off, for he had a new tool. He had learned, and grown, while helping Szeth. Storms … by helping, he’d learned. He wasn’t perfect at it, but he had boundaries now. He refused to take Szeth’s failings upon himself, refused to let failure crush him.

The change to become this newest version of himself wasn’t about abandoning what he admired about himself. It was only about finding a healthy way to handle it.

And so, in the face of the most awful darkness he’d ever felt, Kaladin Stormblessed took a deep breath.

Then stood up.