Shallan assumes her Veil persona, dressing down and carrying Pattern, then slips from Sebarial’s quarter into Urithiru’s night. As she walks, Pattern muses about humans and “corpses,” warming to Adolin despite hating Shardblades. When Pattern suggests his death might help her speak truths, Shallan begs him not to leave. She presses on toward the Breakaway market, hoping to find what Adolin’s official inquiry has not.

Veil explores the chaotic market and practices blending in at a low-end tavern. She orders harsh drink, fumbles local customs, and attracts a bouncer, Jor, who flirts while warning of danger. From him she learns of All’s Alley and a recent killing. Overindulging, she abruptly heals herself with a breath of Stormlight, clearing her head, then heads for the tip.

On the way, Shallan wrestles with her personas and a flash of panic about her brothers’ fate before Pattern reassures her they live. At All’s Alley, she orders Horneater white and, rebuffed by the barkeep Sullik, claims she hunts the man who killed her sister. He quietly points her to the local enforcers.

Veil intrudes on the crew’s table, is bodily tossed by the Horneater Ur, and reasserts dominance by stabbing through her own hand and Ur’s to reclaim the seat. She scratches the Ghostblood sigil into the table, and the leader Betha yields to the implied threat. Betha explains a drunk named Ned from Sadeas’s camp strangled his wife, Rem, prompting Ur to execute Ned by dropping him off a nearby plateau—seemingly a dead end for Veil’s eye-stabbing lead.

As Veil turns to leave, an aside reveals a second murder: a barmaid strangled the next night in precisely the same way, down to ring-scrape marks. Ned had protested innocence as he was taken to his death, yet the identical staging after he was gone implies another killer. Veil pays generously and departs with a new, unsettling lead.