66. Bearer of Agonies

Navani continues her studies of light while imprisoned by Raboniel, conducting prism experiments that reveal Towerlight as a combination of Stormlight and Lifelight. Raboniel visits to check her progress and reveals her ultimate goal: proving whether Stormlight and Voidlight can be safely combined, offering to free the tower if Navani succeeds. Navani privately fears the implications of this knowledge relating to a dangerous sphere that warps air.

Navani is confined but allowed extensive access to texts on light. She performs experiments splitting light through prisms, discovering that Towerlight separates into two distinct rainbows of Stormlight (blue-white) and Lifelight (green-white) that cannot be recombined. While studying her journals about Gavilar's death, she recalls his cryptic words about her being "opposite" to light and remembers he possessed strange violet-black glowing spheres. Raboniel arrives with her unstable daughter and praises Navani's findings as confirmation that Stormlight and Lifelight can coexist. When Navani asks about spheres that warp air, Raboniel becomes guarded and discusses theories of anti-light—a negative opposite to light that would cause instantaneous destruction if combined with positive light. Raboniel tasks Navani with discovering whether Stormlight and Voidlight can be combined without annihilating each other, claiming she will abandon the tower if Navani succeeds. Navani realizes Raboniel seeks a weapon and fears her own scholars may have accidentally mixed the dangerous air-warping sphere with Voidlight. Raboniel departs with her daughter, who continues to search for her mother despite being held by her, revealing a layer of tragedy beneath the Fused commander.