Kaladin spends a day and night bound to a tree by a band of parshmen while Khen urges killing him to prevent discovery. As they break camp at dusk, he notes children among them and recognizes they travel at night. He converses about a card game with the tall parshman leading his rope, then observes a young girl playing among rockbuds, humanizing the group.

Reflecting on his own failed escapes, Kaladin calls them runaway slaves, angering his captor. Kaladin shows his slave brands, but the parshman describes a different horror: living in a fog while humans sold his daughter’s mother. “They took our minds,” he says, highlighting a wound Kaladin realizes he only partially understands.

Syl flits about, oddly carefree, and warns that some parshmen can see her and that a higher spren—a Voidspren—guides the column. She explains the Everstorm filled holes in the parshmen’s souls, restoring Connection and Identity, and that humans once stole their ability to change forms. Kaladin offers practical advice: avoid riverbeds, split into smaller groups, and avoid looking like an army.

During a rest, the captor’s daughter brings Kaladin water and asks why humans won’t let them go; Kaladin explains they will be pursued as a resource and because of ancient enmity. Syl reports the Voidspren wants them to march through the day, but the group plans to camp to protect their grain.

When the Voidspren isn’t watching, Kaladin cuts his rope with Syl-as-knife but refuses to draw a Blade. Instead, he demonstrates survival expertise: using dry interiors of rockbud shells to start a fire, proposing to boil and dry grain into cakes, gather water, and hide smoke at night while drying wood by day. After a tense debate, the parshmen return his knife and make him prove it; he lights the fire, gaining a cautious, useful role among them.