On a plateau after battle, Kaladin fails to save Maps from a chest wound, spiraling into guilt and numbness. Observing the distant fight, he notes the Parshendi’s reverence for their dead and considers exploiting it. Bridge Four lugs wounded back, enduring soldiers’ scorn; the crew debuts a private salute. Lopen quietly confirms their hidden rope-and-spheres preparations while Kaladin mourns their thinning numbers.

At the lumberyard, Teft presses Kaladin about “odd experiences,” then feints a strike. Instinctively Kaladin inhales Stormlight from pouches, surging with strength and awareness; faint light leaks from his skin, and a medical pack briefly sticks to a barrel. In a shaded alley, Syl admits she is not a windspren but something that binds. Kaladin tests by affixing a stone, attracting bindspren, but panics, fearing a Radiants’ curse; Syl, hurt by his suspicion, flies off. Teft and Lopen vow secrecy.

Alone on the Plains at dusk, Kaladin meets a lighteyed man in black—Hoid, once the King’s Wit—who banters about theft and wit. Hoid plays a Trailman’s flute and tells of Derethil and the Wandersail: a voyage through a highstorm to islands where a people murder any who err, blaming an emperor later found long dead. The tale’s moral centers on owning responsibility.

Kaladin reads the story as a call to accountability rather than excuses. Hoid gifts him the flute, mentions promoting his “apprentice” to Worldsinger, and departs. Syl returns and confesses the bond is changing them both—granting Kaladin strength and her memory—and offers to end it, though she would regress.

Rejecting apathy, Kaladin chooses responsibility: to protect his men regardless of how the bond changes him. He sprints back to camp, resolves to use his powers for Bridge Four, and confronts Teft. Teft reveals a childhood in a secret sect awaiting the Radiants but knows only legends. Kaladin answers that together they will learn what he can do.