An epigraph from Navani Kholin’s journal notes increasing Parshendi scouting and night incursions, hinting at a coming stratagem. Aboard ship, Shallan reads Jasnah’s early work on the Hierocracy’s distortions of history and the difficulty of studying the Radiants and Shadesmar; she wonders why Jasnah was reluctant to share it.

Shallan notices the familiar geometric pattern on her cabin wall. She deliberately takes a Memory, then frantically sketches it in ink as creationspren swarm. When the drawing is finished, the embossed pattern rises from the page with a sigh, transfers to the floor and bed, and approaches. Startled, Shallan opens her door to find Jasnah outside, briefly displaying her inky spren, Ivory, before it vanishes.

Jasnah explains that she and Shallan belong to different Radiant orders that share Soulcasting but involve different Surges. She stresses they are not Knights Radiant as an institution, and notes the oaths’ historical breaking harmed spren. The manifest pattern is one of the symbolheaded beings Shallan once drew in Shadesmar form, but here it appears playful and simple.

Identifying the beings as Cryptics—often mislabeled liespren—Jasnah outlines their prominence in a Shadesmar city and tension with honorspren. A scholarly exchange follows on spren nature: ten Surges, emotion versus nature spren, and how human concepts of deities may echo spren. Jasnah remains skeptical of the Almighty as a god. Finally, she frees Shallan from other studies and assigns her to observe and record every interaction with the Cryptic, which bumps Shallan’s foot as if eager to engage.