Six years earlier at a treaty feast, Jasnah Kholin weathers gossip about her heresy and notes the Parshendi’s unease. After glimpsing a Shin helper among Parshendi drummers, she slips into a corridor and finds King Gavilar privately conferring with Meridas Amaram. Uneasy at her father’s secrecy, she departs—and her shadow again behaves impossibly.

In an empty hallway, shadows gather into an inky, prismatic figure drawing a sword as the lamps die and the palace dissolves into a sea of glass beads. Sinking and suffocating, Jasnah senses each bead corresponds to an object. She seizes the bead of the palace, forces it to rise, and forms a beadwork platform and statue, which makes the inky figure pause and bow before reality snaps back.

Shaken but focused, Jasnah keeps her appointment with Liss. She replaces a kill order with instructions to infiltrate Aesudan’s service and report only. Liss mentions selling a Shin servant, echoing Jasnah’s earlier sighting. The feast’s drums abruptly stop, and on her way back Jasnah overhears two western ambassadors whispering about Ash and a Shardblade.

Screams erupt. Jasnah races to Gavilar’s rooms through hallways scarred by a Shardblade and strewn with corpses bearing burned eyes. On the shattered balcony, Gavilar falls, while a Shin man in white—glowing and walking along the palace wall—reaches him and finishes the murder. Gavilar dies, his Blade appearing beside his body.

Parshendi elders Gangnah, Klade, and Varnali confront Jasnah, accepting responsibility and claiming Gavilar was about to do something dangerous. Highprince Sadeas arrives, orders protection for Elhokar, and chaos spreads as the Parshendi use the moment to flee; Dalinar’s cavalry pursuit is destroyed. Jasnah interrogates witnesses and presses Liss but learns little, turning instead to research, determined to understand Shadesmar and the assassin’s impossible abilities.