32. Company

Shallan recovers in Sebarial's sitting room after her harrowing encounter with Re-Shephir, the Midnight Mother spren. She reflects on what she learned about this ancient, captive being while processing her newfound sense of competence and adulthood. The chapter ends with the unexpected arrival of Jasnah Kholin at the tower.

Shallan sits in Sebarial's ornate sitting room, wrapped in blankets and drinking citrus tea with Palona to combat the lingering chill from her confrontation with Re-Shephir hours earlier. When Palona asks about the encounter, Shallan reveals that Re-Shephir is not the dark, beautiful figure of legend but a vast, terrible spren—one of the Unmade—driven by a desperate need to understand humanity through imitation of violence. Shallan sensed something deeper in the creature: a quality suggesting it may have once been human itself and is searching for something lost. She theorizes that while Re-Shephir was captive for centuries before escaping, the other Unmade were never captured and remain hidden, integrated so naturally into the world that humans would not recognize them as anything other than normal phenomena. Though exhausted and having come near to breaking during the encounter, Shallan feels a newfound sense of stability and adult competence. She dismisses her earlier anxiety about soldiers witnessing her without her glove, believing that with her three identities—Shallan, Veil, and Radiant—she can face whatever comes. Adolin returns with news of a significant arrival at the tower: Jasnah Kholin has come.