At the end of the Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater, Noah sacrifices himself to bring Gansey back to life. He’s then retroactively removed from all of the kids’ memories like he never existed. I just wonder if there’s some timeline out there where when Kaladin becomes a Herald—he does the same thing but in reverse?
Right, so, imagine: Dalinar and Navani watch Jezrien open the portal from Ashyn.
A truly remarkable feat, and among the evacuees is a young man who seems reluctant to leave Ashyn to its smoldering fate. He’s among the to-be Heralds making sure that the refugees are first, and he nearly doesn’t make it out before the portal folds back in itself, like fabric cinching closed with the aid of an invisible needle. Like the rest, the young man has a haunted look, but his eyes also carry a deep-seated resolve. Dalinar understands he can’t talk to every refugee, so he moves on despite a strange gut feeling of recognition roiling inside of him. There are Heralds to speak to.
In the next, Jezrien and Ash and Nale going to ask Taln to join their ranks for the Oathpact as Dalinar and Navani watch, and… there’s a young man next to Taln who is cringing away from the horses while Taln is trying to calmly explain that ‘if you don’t like ‘em, you don’t gotta be near ‘em.’ From the back, the man looks no different than the rest of them; a simple outfit, hair tied back, a little taller than Taln. Nothing out of the ordinary.
They don’t see his face as Taln turns to join the Heralds of the past. The boy is still nervously petting the horse’s snout, breathing carefully to soothe his nerves. It almost seems childlike, completely detached from the dread that Dalinar and Navani both feel in their mission.
And then in the ribbon sequence when Ash demands Jezrien treat her like an adult, there he is again. Fumbling with his own embroidery, not doing it spectacularly. He’s there, but he’s not there, more than Dalinar and Navani are, but separate from the rest of them. As if a dream was trying to become real during the day. They can’t waste time looking at the there-not-there boy, letting their eyes go back to Jezrien and Chana. (What they don’t see is the Bridge Four patch the young man is attempting to embroider. They don’t know he has an eternity to learn every skill; that this man born of war is unused to the fine tuned patience of canvas work.)
In the vision where tent when the Oathpact is being made, and look—everyone and their mother is already there in that vision, so they extra can’t pay attention to the strange kid. Except he’s the only one without some.. relevance to the scene in front of them. He’s not even disguised by the vision itself. He looks as the same as all previous visions, both superimposed into each scene and not. Dalinar finally inspects him, curiosity getting the better of him, and it’s Kaladin.
We’ve already seen that Heralds, or any highly Invested person can react in a vision with some degree of lucidity, so the idea of Kaladin looking back… and just smiling back at Dalinar when they make eye contact.
What a strange feeling, to know that someone who helped keep you safe exists in perpetuity. Even though he shouldn’t. Even though it makes no sense. But he’s standing right in front of you, and you still have a mission to complete.
