He turned about, wary. The sky was dark and he stood on a field of dull, bone-white rock, jagged and rough, extending in all directions. Off into eternity. Amorphous shapes made of curling grey smoke rose from the ground. Like smoke rings, only in other shapes. Here a chair. There a rockbud, with vines extended, curling to the sides and vanishing. Beside him appeared the figure of a man in uniform, silent and vaporous, rising lethargically toward the sky, mouth open. The shapes melted and distorted as they climbed higher, though they seemed to hold their forms longer than they should. It was unnerving, standing on the eternal plain, pure darkness above, smoke figures rising all around.
It wasn’t like any vision he’d seen before. It was…
No, wait. He frowned, stepping back as the figure of a tree burst from the ground close to him. I have seen this place before. In the first of my visions, so many months ago. It was fuzzy in his mind. He’d been disoriented, the vision vague, as if his mind hadn’t learned to accept what it was seeing. In fact, the only thing he remembered distinctly was—
“You must unite them,” a strong voice boomed.
—was the voice. Speaking to him from all around, causing the smoke figures to fuzz and distort.
“Why did you lie to me?” Dalinar demanded of the open darkness. “I did what you said, and I was betrayed!”
“Unite them. The sun approaches the horizon. The Everstorm comes. The True Desolation. The Night of Sorrows.”
“I need answers!” Dalinar said. “I don’t trust you any longer. If you want me to listen to you, you’ll need to—”
The vision changed. He spun about, finding that he was still on an open plain of rock, but the normal sun was in the sky. The stone field looked like an ordinary one on Roshar.
It was very odd for one of the visions to set him in a place without others to talk to and interact with. Though, for once, he wore his own clothing. The sharp blue Kholin uniform.
Had this happened before, the other time he’d been in that place of smoke? Yes… it had. This was the first time he’d been taken to a place where he’d been before. Why?
He carefully scanned the scenery. Since the voice didn’t speak to him again, he began to walk, passing cracked boulders and broken bits of shale, pebbles and rocks. There were no plants, not even rockbuds. Just an empty landscape filled with broken stones.
Eventually, he spotted a ridge. Getting to high ground felt like a good idea, though the hike seemed to take hours. The vision did not end. Time was often odd in these visions. He continued to hike up the side of the rock formation, wishing he had his Shardplate to strengthen him. Finally at the top, he walked over to the edge to look down below.
And there he saw Kholinar, his home, the capital city of Alethkar.
It had been destroyed.
The beautiful buildings had been shattered. The windblades were cast down. There were no bodies, just broken stone. This wasn’t like the vision he had seen before, with Nohadon. That wasn’t the Kholinar of the distant past; he could see the rubble of his own palace. But there was no rock formation like the one he stood on near Kholinar in the real world. Always before, these visions had shown him the past. Was this now a vision of the future?
“I cannot fight him any longer,” the voice said.
Dalinar jumped, glancing to the side. A man stood there. He had dark skin and pure white hair. Tall, thick of chest but not massive, he wore exotic clothing of a strange cut: loose, billowing trousers and a coat that came down only to his waist. Both seemed made of gold.
Yes… this very thing had happened before, in his very first vision. Dalinar could remember it now. “Who are you?” Dalinar demanded. “Why are you showing me these visions?”
“You can see it there,” the figure said, pointing. “If you look closely. It begins in the distance.”
Dalinar glanced in that direction, annoyed. He couldn’t make out anything specific. “Storm it,” Dalinar said. “Won’t you answer my questions for once? What is the good of all of this if you just speak in riddles?”
The man didn’t answer. He just kept pointing. And… yes, something was happening. There was a shadow in the air, approaching. A wall of darkness. Like a highstorm, only wrong.
“At least tell me this,” Dalinar said. “What time are we seeing? Is this the past, the future, or something else entirely?”
The figure didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “You’re probably wondering if this is a vision of the future.”
Dalinar started. “I just… I just asked…”
This was familiar. Too familiar.
He said that exact thing last time, Dalinar realized, feeling a chill. This all happened. I’m seeing the same vision again.
The figure squinted at the horizon. “I cannot see the future completely. Cultivation, she is better at it than I. It’s as if the future is a shattering window. The further you look, the more pieces that window breaks into. The near future can be anticipated, but the distant future… I can only guess.”
“You can’t hear me, can you?” Dalinar asked, feeling a horror as he finally began to understand. “You never could.”
Blood of my fathers… he’s not ignoring me. He can’t see me! He doesn’t speak in riddles. It just seems that way because I took his responses as cryptic answers to my questions.
He didn’t tell me to trust Sadeas. I… I just assumed…
Everything seemed to shake around Dalinar. His preconceptions, what he’d thought he’d known. The ground itself.
“That is what could happen,” the figure said, nodding into the distance. “It’s what I fear will happen. It’s what he wants. The True Desolation.”
No, that wall in the air wasn’t a highstorm. It wasn’t rain making that enormous shadow, but blowing dust. He remembered this vision in full, now. It had ended here, with him confused, staring out at that oncoming wall of dust. This time, however, the vision continued.
The figure turned to him. “I am sorry to do this to you. By now I hope that what you’ve seen has given you a foundation to understand. But I can’t know for certain. I don’t know who you are, or how you have found your way here.”
“I…” What to say? Did it matter?
“Most of what I show you are scenes I have seen directly,” the figure said. “But some, such as this one, are born out of my fears. If I fear it, then you should too.”
The land was trembling. The wall of dust was being caused by something. Something approaching.
The ground was falling away.
Dalinar gasped. The very rocks ahead were shattering, breaking apart, becoming dust. He backed away as everything began to shake, a massive earthquake accompanied by a terrible roar of dying rocks. He fell to the ground.
There was an awful, grinding, terrifying moment of nightmare. The shaking, the destruction, the sounds of the land itself seeming to die.
Then it was past. Dalinar breathed in and out before rising on unsteady legs. He and the figure stood on a solitary pinnacle of rock. A little section that—for some reason—had been protected. It was like a stone pillar a few paces wide, rising high into the air.
Around it, the land was gone. Kholinar was gone. It had all fallen away into unplumbed darkness below. He felt vertigo, standing on the tiny bit of rock that—impossibly—remained.