Adolin climbs the inner wall of Lasting Integrity on a crystalline day, taking in the surreal fortress geometry and the glittering sea of beads. He notes his team camped nearby, how Godeke briefly entered to heal him, and that some companions departed to inform Dalinar. The honorspren delay but prepare his trial, giving him legal lessons despite their intransigence.

From the battlements, Adolin and his guard Vaiu witness an extraordinary gathering of deadeyes—hundreds standing silently along the coast, some vanishing when summoned as Shardblades. The honorspren have run out of space to house them. Vaiu claims the deadeyes sense Connection to the justice to be administered, while Adolin objects to being punished for ancestral sins. The High Judge’s return and the trial loom.

Inside the fortress, Veil struggles with the disorienting interior while Radiant steadies their progress. They work through the list of the seventeen resident humans to locate Restares for Mraize. Nalthian traders and Horneaters are eliminated; four wanderers are dismissed via reports to Mraize. Only a reclusive man called “Sixteen,” who emerges every sixteen days and lives near a statue garden, remains as a lead.

While staking out Sixteen, Pattern joins Radiant. She presses him about Shallan’s past and his motives. Pattern explains he sought to bond a human because spren and humans are two halves of one world and danger was coming; he volunteered to be “the middle step.” Radiant forces direct answers: he admits to lying and secretly using Mraize’s cube to spy, and says he brought someone important for Shallan to meet. A robed, shadowed-headed spren appears, triggering Shallan to seize control and denounce Pattern as a traitor.

Sixteen exits his hut, and Shallan decisively tails and confronts him. When she exposes his face, he is a bald Shin man, not Restares, and he flees after shouting in an unknown tongue. Shallan resists drawing a weapon, refuses Pattern’s explanations, asserts she has made a firm decision, and concludes Restares is not in the fortress, intending to report this to Mraize.