Kaladin marches through fertile fields toward Hearthstone, exhausted and burdened by failure. Four days earlier he had left via Oathgate, then flew northwest until his Stormlight ran out; the final ninety miles took three days on foot. The Everstorm arrived at noon, forcing him to shelter in a rock hollow he cut with his Shardblade. Debris along the way confirms the storm’s damage and stokes his dread.

As rain resumes during the Weeping, Kaladin notes familiar landmarks—Hobble’s Brook and nearby fields—while Syl remarks on his eyes shifting back to brown without Stormlight. He pushes himself to double-time, desperate yet fearing what awaits. Cresting the final hill, he finds Hearthstone dark, roofless, and hollow, with no lights and many buildings destroyed. He avoids his family’s home, unable to face potential loss, and instead heads for Brightlord Roshone’s manor, where the parshmen had been kept.

Approaching the manor in the rain, Kaladin and Syl see boards across broken windows and flickering light within. Gloomspren swirl as Syl’s returning memories and Kaladin’s guilt surface. Expecting a nest of transformed parshmen, he scouts the parshmen quarters and finds a hole torn in the wall. Thumping and motion from inside the manor suggest many occupants.

The back door grinds open and a lantern’s beam finds him. Kaladin prepares to summon Syl, but the figure is a human guardsman with a rust-spotted helm and a mace. The man challenges him as a potential deserter. Kaladin yields, hands up, and allows himself to be brought inside—proof that some in Hearthstone survived and that answers, and consequences, await within.