The Sunlit Man

by Brandon Sanderson

“I need a weapon, Aux!”

Auxiliary was a shapeshifting metal tool that, in this case, he could manifest physically as a crowbar.

this society had a harvest every day. They must sow crops, then reap them mere hours later, before fleeing into the darkness.

his captors affixed a golden set of bracers to his forearms, just like the ones the ember people wore.

There was a man on top of the box already, one of the peasants—a

Something about…you killing? Aux said.

Glowing Eyes seized each of them in turn by the throat, and they seemed to wilt, their skin growing ashen. When he tossed them aside, they were corpses, and the ember in his chest grew brighter.

Glowing Eyes yanked out the spear, leaving the ember behind.

Well, Auxiliary said, I guess now we know where those ember people come from.

It was one of the few useful aspects of his Torment. Nomad had gained an unusual ability to metabolize nearly any kind of Investiture, although he sometimes required Auxiliary’s help.

But he could still hear. And somehow, in shutting out the light—there within the blackness of his own design—he felt something. Something of the person he’d once been.

By not threatening anyone, Nomad could avoid triggering the Torment.

He could hold his breath practically forever—with his highly Invested soul renewing his cells in much the same way the sun here made the plants grow.

Nomad dropped the shield and dashed through the battlefield, the weight of forgotten oaths on his shoulders.

Being able to feed on Investiture was an aftereffect of the burden he’d once carried, the thing that had given him his Torment.

that sheet of rainfall reminded Nomad of another storm back home. A place he missed terribly but could never visit again,

Nomad pegged him immediately as the man named Zeal, the one Rebeke had spoken to on the radio.

“Sunlit,” Contemplation said. “A Sunlit Man.”

This hadn’t simply been a rescue operation—indeed, the rescue might have been intended to cover up a more interesting heist: the theft of this item, which he knew for a fact to be a Scadrian authorization key.

His hair had been burned away in the flash of sunlight. Sunlit Man.

“Aw, Damnation,” Nomad said with a sigh. “Wit? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Auxiliary?” Nomad demanded. “Did you reinforce my Connection to Wit when you were playing with my soul earlier?”

“You may have saved the cosmere.” “I absolutely did not save the cosmere,” Nomad snapped, finding a pebble in his pocket and throwing it through Wit’s head. The image rippled and then restored. “I might have saved you though.”

Huh. It wasn’t often that one could stab him with a knife that hurt. Took familiarity. And truth. Two things Wit was far too good at avoiding.

“I was that boy,” Wit said from behind. “When I was young. On Yolen. Before this all began—before God died and worlds started ending. I…I was that boy.”

“So it’s a blessing?” Nomad asked, gesturing to himself. “This Torment you’ve given me?” “Every Torment is,” Wit said, “even mine.”

You don’t age anymore. “My body might not,” he whispered, “but my soul sure does.

Ideals are like statues in the wind. They seem so permanent, but truth is, erosion happens subtly, constantly.”

Sunhearts. Lottery. “People?” he asked. “These power sources used to be people?”

That’s what the strange game of tag had been about: choosing the next people to be sacrificed to the sun.

“That’s why there aren’t any ghosts here,” he said softly in Alethi. “Threnodites, they have this phantom echo to their souls. A sort of smoky shadow that lives on after they die.

One soul’s worth, even with a shade attached, wouldn’t be enough for us to absorb over a thousand BEUs of Investiture like we did, Aux said. So there must be some other force filling the stone, like Stormlight on Roshar. The sunlight must be Invested, as we guessed.

Please, no, the knight says. I’m no god. I work for a living.

The ship parked in the sky, hovering, with the Cinder King standing at the bow. It was an invitation if Nomad had ever seen one.

“Conquest doesn’t remove countries,” Nomad said. “It removes lines on a map. Unity requires something else.”

“I really do only want to get away. But there’s one thing you need to know about my people. You promised me no tricks. And you should never break an oath to a Rosharan.”

Without a dream, he will wear us down eventually and destroy us, no matter what we do. So yes, I’d prefer to trust a myth, Confidence. Instead of just stopping and embracing the sun.”

Wit had asked him to carry something known as a Dawnshard, a well of unimaginable Investiture designed as a weapon.

Only that the result of trying to help was a dead friend—reduced to a voice in his head—and entire armies trying to hunt him.

The Dawnshard had found Auxiliary, a being of Investiture.

It had turned Aux’s very substance into power to fuel Nomad’s abilities.

killed. Nomad had barely been able to stop himself before burning the entirety of Auxiliary’s soul away in a moment of supercharged power.

“When I adopted the Dawnshard from Wit, it created my Torment. Too much Investiture, taken in too quickly, warping my very being.”

when I gave away the Dawnshard, it left me changed. With a kind of scar tissue on my soul. That’s the Torment.

“A Dawnshard is one of the primal forces of creation, and the one we carried is diametrically opposed to the concept of violence and harm.

Because of the way the Dawnshards were used… “To kill God. Yes, I know.” He sat back, thoughtful, meeting Elegy’s glare.

“Shades do not remember,” another said. “We are not shades. We are the Chorus of the people.”

“No, I don’t care for Sunlit,” he said. “You’re right.” “Why? It’s a title of honor, of great respect.”

He was able to use it to shave off a piece of the sunheart, something he’d heard them describe. It was less like glass and more like resin. The new fragment continued to glow with the same living light.

“Elegy always did seek the light,” Contemplation said. “Then one day the Cinder King rammed it right into her chest…”