Edgedancer

Edgedancer is a novella set in the Stormlight Archive fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson, taking place between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer. It follows Lift, a young Reshi street urchin with emerging supernatural abilities, as she flees the comforts of an imperial palace, chases a deadly adversary to a foreign city, and struggles to understand what kind of person she is meant to be.

The story opens with Lift, a girl who insists she is ten years old, infiltrating the Bronze Palace in Azimir alongside Azish thieves. They plan to rob the palace while officials are distracted choosing a new Prime Aqasix, the emperor of Azir. Lift is accompanied by Wyndle, a cultivationspren: a vine-like spirit invisible to everyone but her who grows along surfaces to provide handholds. She calls him her pet Voidbringer, a term for the ancient destroyers of civilization, which Wyndle finds deeply offensive. Lift possesses two supernatural abilities fueled by Stormlight, a magical energy most people absorb from gemstones. One eliminates friction from her body, making her impossibly slippery; the other accelerates plant growth. Uniquely, Lift can metabolize food directly into Stormlight.

Inside the palace, Lift abandons the robbery to pursue food. A teenage thief named Gawx follows her. Lift sneaks into the Prime's quarters, where viziers and scions, high-ranking officials involved in the imperial selection, debate who should become the next emperor. A man Lift calls Darkness interrupts, carrying legal paperwork authorizing her execution. His minions capture Lift and drain her Stormlight, but she manages to swallow a bread roll, converting the food into power and escaping. During the chase, a minion slits Gawx's throat. Lift flees but cannot bring herself to abandon him. She returns to his body and breathes Stormlight into him, using the healing power of Regrowth to restore Gawx to life. The effort completely drains her. Darkness prepares to execute Lift, but the viziers have declared Gawx the new Prime Aqasix, interpreting his resurrection as a divine sign, and Gawx presents a pardon. Darkness, rigidly bound to legal authority, departs.

A week later, Lift is traveling through northern Tashikk, having fled the palace where Gawx offered her every comfort. She tells Wyndle that staying in one place too long means people form expectations that threaten to transform her. Privately, she fears a deeper betrayal: Three years ago, she visited the Nightwatcher, a powerful being associated with the Old Magic, and asked never to change, yet she is growing taller.

Lift arrives at Yeddaw, a city carved into a stone plain as a network of deep trenches. She claims she came to eat all ten varieties of local pancakes, but Wyndle suspects the real reason: Darkness has been spotted in Yeddaw, hunting another Surgebinder, someone with supernatural powers like Lift's. In the immigrant quarter, Lift investigates the Tashi's Light Orphanage, run by a harsh woman called the Stump. An old man outside tells Lift that the Stump secretly trades spheres, exchanging ones infused with Stormlight for dun ones drained of it, a practice that seems financially senseless.

The next morning, Lift follows Darkness through the city. At a market, a young thief named Tiqqa steals fruit, is caught by Darkness, and draws a knife in panic. Darkness summons his Shardblade, a legendary magical weapon, and kills her. Lift tries to heal Tiqqa but fails. She vows to remember the girl's name. Trailing Darkness to his headquarters, Lift sneaks inside and discovers him lecturing two apprentices about their mission to execute Surgebinders. Wyndle identifies Darkness as Nale, one of ten Heralds, supposedly immortal figures who long ago abandoned humanity. Nale explains that Surgebinder bonds risk allowing Voidbringers to return and trigger a Desolation, a catastrophic war. Also present is the Assassin in White, a Shin man named Szeth-son-Neturo, who insists the Voidbringers have already returned, citing a new storm with red lightning. Nale dismisses the claim and gives his apprentices until sunset to find the hidden Surgebinder.

Lift heads to the Grand Indicium, Yeddaw's central archive, hoping to identify the Surgebinder through records of supernatural events. She contacts Emperor Gawx via spanreed, a device for magical long-distance communication, and secures a decree ordering the scribes to assist her. Before progress is made, a government emergency is declared: The Everstorm, a devastating new storm blowing from the wrong direction, is approaching, and all citizens must seek shelter. Parshmen, the docile servants found throughout the land, are to be imprisoned or exiled.

Lift learns that Darkness's apprentices have already identified their target. Szeth tells Lift the target is an old philosopher near the orphanage, the same man from the benches. She races through the empty streets as the storm closes in. In the alley beside the orphanage, she finds both apprentices dead. The old man reveals himself as Arclo, one of the Sleepless, an ancient immortal being whose body is composed of thousands of interlocking cremlings, small chitinous creatures. He killed the apprentices in self-defense.

As Arclo presses Lift with questions about identity and purpose, a realization strikes her: The Stump has been unconsciously healing children. She trades spheres because she feeds on Stormlight without knowing it, and children brought to her sick or injured recover suspiciously often. The Stump is a Radiant, a person with Surgebinding powers, and the one Darkness is actually hunting.

The Stump pulls Lift into the orphanage as the Everstorm hits. Inside, Lift eats pancakes to restore her power and notices that Mik, a boy who arrived with a head wound, is now speaking coherently, healed overnight by the Stump. Darkness cuts through the front door with his Shardblade. Lift shouts to draw him away from the children. The Stump strikes Darkness with a wooden beam, but he throws her down and stabs her with a knife, leaving her to bleed out.

Lift lures Darkness onto the rooftop during the storm's full fury. He swings his Shardblade. She raises her hands and speaks the Third Ideal of the Edgedancers, her order of Radiants: "I will listen to those who have been ignored." Wyndle transforms into a Shardblade, a silvery rod, and Lift blocks the blow. Behind Darkness, red lightning illuminates the parshmen exiled into the storm: Their eyes are glowing. The Voidbringers have returned, proving Nale's centuries-long mission to prevent a Desolation has failed.

Nale's sword vanishes. He falls to his knees, weeping, and admits he has been failing and losing himself. Lift hugs him. He clings to her briefly, then begins to glow and shoots into the sky. Lift rushes downstairs and heals the Stump.

The next day, Gawx sends word via spanreed that the Everstorm has struck across the continent and parshmen are transforming. He asks Lift to come home. She slips out of the orphanage, pausing at the city gate to heal wounded refugees. She tells Wyndle she is heading back to Azimir, reasoning that nobody truly knows what they are doing in life and that Gawx and the viziers need her. She has nothing figured out, she admits, but says it with confidence. She tells Wyndle she is starting to think he might not be a Voidbringer after all.