Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)

by Brandon Sanderson

Another corpse—half revealed by a drawn-back sheet—was on the slab in front of Mela, though this one was far stranger. The elongated body had a black shell covering most of it, from neck to feet. That had been cut free to open up the chest. Dalinar couldn’t make sense of the shell. It looked like clothing, kind of, but was hard like singer carapace—and had apparently been attached to the skin. The head was a soggy mass of black flesh, soft like intestines, with no visible eyes or features. “What on Roshar…” Dalinar said. “The hands seem human, if too long, but the rest of it…” “I have no idea,” Mela said. She glanced away and shivered. “It’s not human, sir. I don’t know what it is.” In the back of Dalinar’s mind, the Stormfather rumbled. This … the spren said. This is not possible. What? Dalinar asked. That is a Cryptic, he said. The Lightweaver spren. Only they don’t have bodies in this realm. They can’t. “Sir,” Lyn said from a nearby slab. The corpse she’d uncovered was a pile of vines vaguely shaped like a person. Cultivationspren … the Stormfather said. Return to that first body you saw. NOW. Dalinar did not object and walked toward the front of the pavilion. What he’d first dismissed as an ordinary body now seemed anything but. The white-blue hair, the pieces of clothing that were—he now recognized—the exact same color as the body. The Stormfather’s thunder grew distant. I knew him, the Stormfather said. I could not see it at first. I did not want to see it. This is V...