Page 49 of The Sunlit Man

You didn’t know what either would do.

“I let the Dawnshard consume us, Auxiliary. I let itfeedon you.”

I salvaged a little. This bit of my mind. The last fragment of my soul.

Wit’s fault as much as it was Nomad’s. Done ostensibly to protect the cosmere. Wit had asked him to carry something known as a Dawnshard, a well of unimaginable Investiture designed as a weapon.

Nomad didn’t know the specifics. Only that the result of trying to help was a dead friend—reduced to a voice in his head—and entire armies trying to hunt him. He’d accepted that terrible weapon to hide it, and that power had warped his soul. Worse, he hadn’t known, hadn’t realized, that bonding Auxiliary would lead to such a tragedy.

They’d spent years together with the potential lurking there, unseen. Then, in a moment of need, he’d unconsciously reached out for any energy source he could access. The Dawnshard had found Auxiliary, a being of Investiture.

It had turned Aux’svery substanceinto power to fuel Nomad’s abilities.

The Dawnshard—the weapon—protected itself. No matter what. No matter who it killed. Nomad had barely been able to stop himself before burning the entirety of Auxiliary’s soul away in a moment of supercharged power.

This is not the time for regret, the knight chides softly. You have some very large problems to solve.

He was right. Nomad opened his eyes and fished in his pocket, bringing out the drained sunheart that had been left after he’d ingested the Investiture. It felt like glass in his fingers—a small cylindrical lump of smokestone eight inches tall and a few in diameter. The surface was marked with ridges and a kind of grain, like melted wax. It was random, of course, but he couldswearthat one section looked like a screaming face…

Rebeke said this thing had been able to power a ship formonths. That kind of power wasn’t part of most souls, not even Threnodite souls. Something else was happening. Power was being drawn from another place, with the soul acting as a kind of seed or starter. But why had the Rosharan sunheart the Cinder King showed him been so small? Why hadn’t it acted as a similar seed?

He stared at the notebooks and felt a building dread. This was the sort of thing he’d run from, even before the chase truly began. Failures that wrapped his heart like barbed wire, stretching back to his childhood. But it was either this or go crawling to the Cinder King and take his offer of employment. Nomad intended to consider that only if the Night Brigade itself were at the door. So he accepted his lot.

And started drawing up schematics.

Two hours later,he had fully drawn schematics, though he had no idea if they would work. The plan wasn’t to fabricate all-new engines, but to modify the ones they had to intake water, superheat it to steam, and use it for propellant instead.

It was a slapdash fix. Hopefully it would work. There were some changes he knew he’d need to make, but his brain was growing numb. He needed a break, at least from that problem.

He ignored the cot for now, though he was as tired as ever. Best he could tell, the people of Beacon didn’t sleep on regular schedules—indeed, it seemed like the entireplanetlived on a strange “take hour-long naps when you feel like it” system. Rebeke had been baffled by his explanation that where he came from, people all generally slept at the same time—and for some eight hours at that.

Anyway, he didn’t want to sleep yet. He washed up at a basin they’d given him and checked himself in the little hand mirror.He had a faint patina of stubble on his chin, and his hair had fully regrown—his body, as always, eventually adapted to match how he’d looked when he first took the Dawnshard all those years ago. He tossed the mirror aside, straightening the buttoned shirt they’d given him, and pulled his chair over to Elegy, who was still chained to the wall.

It’s not just me, right? the knight asks. It is bizarre that you have a woman chained to your wall, isn’t it?

“It is admittedly bizarre.”

And you want her…why?

“I think her condition and mine might be similar,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Elegy. “When I adopted the Dawnshard from Wit, it created my Torment. Too much Investiture, taken in too quickly, warping my very being.”

Why didn’t it warp Wit?

“I think it did. He just hides it well. Either way, when I gave away the Dawnshard, it left me changed. With a kind of scar tissue on my soul. That’s the Torment. The strange Connection I have to all places at once, the ability to feed on Investiture, the ability to Skip from location to location—but also the curse of not being able to fight back.

“A Dawnshard is one of the primal forces of creation, and the one we carried is diametrically opposed to the concept of violence and harm. The scar tissue on my soul has that same Intent, that same requirement of its host: that I be unable to harm anyone at all for any reason.”

It’s ironic, you know, the hero says. Because of the way the Dawnshards were used…

“To kill God. Yes, I know.” He sat back, thoughtful, meetingElegy’s glare. “She’s got something similar, I’m guessing. A canker on her soul. The Cinder King’s fire burned away her memories and personality, but there’s no reason that should make her so violent, so enraged. I can’t figure out how he controls creatures like her. It has to do with some kind of Connection or…well, scar tissue.”

On the soul. That makes her violent, where yours makes you the opposite.

“Basically yes,” he said.

When you were following your oaths, your natural need to follow them pushed through the scar tissue, though.

“It did, for a time,” he said. “But now I feel like the scar is getting worse, Aux. I need to do something to stop that growth or, better, make it recede. Enough that I can fight, but not so far that I’m unable to Skip away from this planet.”

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