68. One Family

Venli practices her nascent Radiant powers in a secluded area of Urithiru, discovering she can communicate with and shape stone itself using Voidlight. She encounters three additional spren eager to bond her friends as squires, and begins formulating a plan to escape the tower by sculpting a passage through the collapsed tunnels below.

Venli reflects on hearing a singing voice that reminds her of her deceased mother, Jaxlim, who drowned in the chasms during the floods that Venli herself triggered through her betrayal. She acknowledges to Timbre her guilt and responsibility for her mother's death, noting that while the forms influenced her, she ultimately made the choices. Timbre helps console her by emphasizing that her resistance to the forms' influence should be viewed as a positive. Taking advantage of Raboniel's focus on Navani and the soldiers' preoccupation with the humans, Venli travels to the eighth floor with a sack of gemstones containing both Voidlight and Stormlight. She discovers that while Stormlight is blocked by the tower's defenses, Voidlight allows her to access her gemheart. When she presses her hand to the stone wall while infused with Voidlight, she connects with the ancient stones themselves, which reveal themselves as Dawnsingers—the ancient people who shaped stone through direct connection and song. The stones share a vision of their former civilization and welcome her as a shaper. She rapidly expends her spheres—draining all but one—in this profound experience of communication and stone-shaping. She successfully manipulates the stone, making it malleable and moldable like clay. Afterward, three additional spren resembling Timbre appear, eager to bond Venli's friends as squires, made stable in the Physical Realm by Venli as their anchor. Venli sends them away to avoid discovery, then decides to use her new stone-shaping abilities to sculpt an escape route through the collapsed tunnels below the tower, planning to make their escape appear as a cave-in death to cover their tracks.