4. Taker of Secrets

Dalinar experiences a vision of ancient times in the Purelake, witnessing Knights Radiant fighting a Thunderclast animated by a corrupted spren. The Almighty tasks him with refounding the Knights Radiant to prepare for coming danger. Upon waking, Dalinar discovers threatening glyphs carved on his chamber wall reading "Sixty-two days. Death follows," which he interprets as warning of the Everstorm's imminent arrival.

Dalinar enters a vision set in the Purelake during an earlier era. He finds himself among soldiers in ancient uniforms running through shallow water alongside a female knight in distinctive Shardplate. They hunt for a corrupted spren—one touched by Sja-anat—that has taken on a shadowy, red-eyed form. When the spren attempts to escape, it summons a Thunderclast, a massive skeletal stone creature thirty feet tall that erupts from the lakebed. The female knight charges forward glowing with Stormlight to combat it. The Almighty appears beside Dalinar in the form of a Selay soldier and reveals that the Knights Radiant were created not by divine design but by spren imitating what the Almighty had given to men. He tasks Dalinar with refounding these ten orders of knights, uniting them, creating a fortress to weather the storm, and convincing Odium that he can be defeated so that Odium will choose a champion rather than risk total defeat. Dalinar questions the Almighty's nature, deducing that a true God cannot be killed and that if the Almighty died, then so too can his enemy Odium. Upon waking in his quarters, Dalinar finds mysterious white glyphs scratched into his chamber wall reading "Sixty-two days. Death follows." The mark was made while he slept using a rock pried from the window ornament. Navani brings in Rushu, a scholar, to examine the glyphs, then dismisses her when realizing the threat's significance. Kaladin expresses concern about the breach of security, suspecting an intruder, but Dalinar dismisses his worry. Dalinar tells Navani and Adolin that the glyphs represent the Everstorm's arrival in sixty-two days and orders her to release the proclamation and summon the highprinces for a meeting.