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January 29 - March 12, 2025
“We are not a rebellion,” Venli said. “We are a group of objectors who do not like the choices we’ve been offered. Fused oppression or human tyranny? The god of hatred or the supposedly honorable god who abandoned us to slavery? We accept neither. We are the listeners. We will cast off everything—including our very forms if we must—to find freedom.
he often … didn’t want to. Or felt he didn’t deserve to. Same difference.
The rebuilding of the palace had been overseen and accomplished by several Fused of a tall, limber variety called fannahn-im, Those Ones of Alteration.
Nex-im, Those Ones of Husks, the ninth brand of Fused.
“I think … I think I have seen this style before. You fight like Azure does.” “She fights like me, boy.” “She’s hunting for you, I think.” “So Adolin has said. The fool woman will have to get through Cultivation’s Perpendicularity first, so I won’t hold my Breaths waiting for her to arrive.”
Roy liked this
“Cut off a bit of divinity and leave it alone. Eventually it comes alive. And if you let a man die with too Invested a soul—or Invest him right as he’s dying—he’ll leave behind a shadow you can nail back onto a body. His own, if you’re feeling charitable. Once done, you have this.” Zahel waved to himself. “Type Two Invested entity. Dead man walking.”
“How can you tell?” Syl asked. “I don’t think he ever gets excited. Not even when I tell him I have a fun surprise for him.” “Your surprises,” Kaladin said, “are never fun.” “I put a rat in his boot,” Syl whispered. “It took me forever. I can’t lift something so heavy, so I had to lead it with food.”
Roy liked this
He has two brains too, she thought. A light brain and a dark brain.
“Your abilities are what made the original Oathpact,” she said. “And they existed—and were named—long before the Knights Radiant were founded. A Bondsmith Connected the Heralds to Braize, made them immortal, and locked our enemies away. A Bondsmith bound other Surges and brought humans to Roshar, fleeing their dying world. A Bondsmith created—or at least discovered—the Nahel bond: the ability of spren and humans to join together into something better. You Connect things, Dalinar. Realms. Ideas. People.”
Nearby one of the grooms watched, baffled, until one of the others nudged him. “I talk to my sword too,” Adolin told them. “Funny thing is, she eventually talked back. Never be afraid to show a little respect to those you depend upon, friends.”
Was he happy? He wasn’t sad. For now, he’d accept “not sad.”
She gripped her pencil and started drawing Adolin. Really, really poorly. I don’t care, Shallan thought. Veil gave him a unibrow. Veil … Veil drew him with crossed eyes. That’s going too far. Veil put him in an ugly coat. And cut-off, knee-length trousers. “Fine!” Shallan said, ripping the page out of the sketchbook and wadding it up. “You win. Insufferable woman.”
Storms, I love this man, she thought. For his humor, his brightness, his genuine goodness. With that smile, brighter than the cold Shadesmar sun, she became Shallan. Deeply and fully.
“I know how you feel. Dark, like there’s never been light in the world. Like everything in you is a void, and you wish you could just feel something. Anything. Pain would at least tell you you’re alive. Instead you feel nothing. And you wonder, how can a man breathe, but already be dead?”
“You just want to stop existing,” Kaladin said. “You don’t want to actually kill yourself, not on most days. But you figure it sure would be convenient if you weren’t around anymore.”
You think what you did was worse. You’re always willing to give others more charity than you extend yourself.
makay-im, or “Those Ones of the Depths”—had access to one of her same Surges: the ability to turn stone into a liquid.
shetel-im, the Flowing Ones, who could slide across any surface as if it were slick.
But perhaps most important, the change was in not merely knowing that you weren’t alone—but in feeling it. Realizing that no matter how isolated you thought you were, no matter how often your brain told you terrible things, there were others who understood.
“No one ever accomplished anything by being content with who they were, Shallan,” Adolin said. “We accomplish great things by reaching toward who we could become.” “As long as it’s what you want to become. Not what someone else thinks you should become.”
mavset-im, Those Ones of Masks. The Masked Ones, illusionists, had the power to change how they appeared.
“The Sibling—the tower, Urithiru—is the child of Honor and Cultivation, created to fight Odium. The place runs on the Sibling’s Light, a mixture of the essences of its parents. Stormlight alone shouldn’t be able to work the tower’s core systems. Stormlight, to the Sibling, is incomplete. Like a key missing several of its teeth.”
“I saw Prince Adolin throw his Blade,” Vyre said. “Three months ago, on the battlefield in northern Jah Keved. He is no Radiant, yet his Blade responds to him as if he were one.…”
An old flute that Wyndle said looked strange.
Odium wasn’t able to see Renarin’s future. No one could.
You could have simply come and given me the order today, then left, Taravangian thought. You talk instead. You’re lonely. You want to show off. You’re … human.
Szeth. The sword. Odium feared the sword.
Soulcasters didn’t hold spren because they were spren. Manifesting in the Physical Realm like Shardblades. Spren became metal on this side. Somehow the ancient spren had been coaxed into manifesting as Soulcasters instead of Blades?
Dalinar frowned. “What is a cow?” “Big, juicy, delicious. Wish I could still eat them. You don’t seem to have them around here, which I find amazing, as I’m sure there was one somewhere in Sadeas’s lineage.
I am led to wonder, from experiences such as this, if we have been wrong. We call humans alien to Roshar, yet they have lived here for thousands of years now. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge there are no aliens or interlopers. Only cousins.
Venli had not forgotten what had earned the Lady of Wishes her terrible reputation: an attempt long ago to create a disease that would end the war by exterminating all of humankind.
She creates in us a faction loved by neither men nor Odium, Glys agreed. No home. No allies. She might be destroyed by either. We will need more. Like you and like me. Together.
The Voidlight didn’t push her to move or act, like the Stormlight had. Instead it enflamed her emotions, in this case making her more paranoid,
“I can name this rhythm: the Rhythm of War. Odium and Honor mixed together.
Gavilar Kholin—king, husband, occasional monster—had been searching for a way to kill a god.
“It’s not such a terrible thing, to be too weak. Makes us need one another.
“It will,” Wit said, “but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again.”
Notum lowered his sheet, then said in a loud voice, “Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men!”
“I did,” Navani said. “The tones were a terrible cacophony when combined, but somehow beautiful at the same time.” “Like the two of us?” Raboniel asked. “Like the two of us.” “By this music,” Raboniel said, “I give you the title Voice of Lights, Navani Kholin. As is my right.”
Smiling because, for how bad everything could be, some things were still good.
Our weakness doesn’t make us weak. Our weakness makes us strong. For we had to carry it all these years.”
Maya’s voice grew louder, gasping breaths punctuated by ragged howls. And in that moment, Adolin … felt her pain somehow. A deep agony. And … anger?
