Prologue: To Question

Six years before the main narrative, Jasnah Kholin attends a feast honoring the Parshendi treaty while planning to hire an assassin. After experiencing a disturbing encounter with shadow-creatures in a realm of glass beads called Shadesmar, she meets with the assassin Liss to hire surveillance rather than murder. The evening culminates in the assassination of King Gavilar by a mysterious Shin man with supernatural abilities, carried out on the orders of the Parshendi leadership themselves.

Jasnah moves through a feast hall in Kholinar, observing her drunken uncle Dalinar, her brother Elhokar, and the Parshendi delegation, all while heading to a secret meeting. She notices her shadow behaving unnaturally, causing her distress. Encountering her father Gavilar in a hallway with Brightlord Amaram, she senses he is keeping secrets from her, though he deflects her questions before returning to the celebration. As Jasnah continues through the corridors, her shadow again misbehaves, and she is suddenly pulled into Shadesmar, a realm of glass beads and shadow-creatures. There, a dark oily figure confronts her with a sword, but after she demonstrates her ability to command the beads and creates a statue-guardian, the figure bows respectfully and withdraws. Jasnah returns to the palace hallway, shaken but determined to investigate further. She keeps her appointment with Liss, a skilled assassin known as the Weeper, instructing her not to kill but to spy on Aesudan, Elhokar's wife, after placing one of her maids. Liss mentions she previously owned a Shin servant she sold to a slaver, which troubles Jasnah. Returning to the feast, Jasnah overhears two foreign ambassadors discussing concerns about 'Ash' and a creature carrying a Shardblade, and observes that the Parshendi musicians have stopped playing. Screams erupt, and Jasnah rushes to her father's quarters to find destruction and corpses. On the broken balcony, she witnesses her father Gavilar fall along with a Shin man glowing with white light. The Shin man impossibly walks down the outer palace wall and kills the injured Gavilar below. Three Parshendi elders—Gangnah, Klade, and Varnali—appear and claim responsibility for the assassination, stating it was necessary to prevent Gavilar from doing something dangerous. Highprince Sadeas arrives with soldiers, and the Parshendi leaders are soon hanged, though most of their forces escape the city, destroying Dalinar's pursuing cavalry. Jasnah dedicates herself to investigating the assassin's supernatural abilities and his connection to Shadesmar, seeking answers about the impossible events she witnessed.