AN: Written in between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, and not canon to Rhythm.
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High in the mountains, on the plateau before the ancient city of Urithiru, two figures climbed the steps to one of the ten Oathgates. One was a young man, tall and broad of shoulder, with the tan skin of the Alethi but distinctly un-Alethi golden streaks in his black hair. He was clad in a dark blue uniform coat, and carried a backpack, light blazing from the seams. The other was a woman, notably shorter than her companion and quite slender, with brilliant coppery hair and freckles dotting her pale skin.

Adolin Kholin smiled at his wife as she climbed up onto the Oathgate platform just behind him. Even now, almost six months after their wedding, he kept being struck all over again with wonder that Shallan had chosen him. One of the first of the returning Knights Radiant, pathfinder of the Order of the Lightweavers, and she had chosen him, even though he wasn't even a Radiant.

Or he wasn't so far, at least. What they were about to do might change that.

Adolin bent down and unfastened the top of the backpack. Inside were dozens of gemstones, larger than the fragments used in spheres, blazing with Stormlight. A highstorm had blown through just the previous night, so the gems were fully charged.

"Are you ready, Adolin?" Shallan asked as Adolin straightened.

Adolin took a deep breath, pushing away his worries and his distractions as he would before a duel or a battle. "Ready as I'll ever be," he said.

With a sharp inhalation, Shallan began to glow softly. She laid her sleeved safehand on his shoulder, and the world shattered. All around Adolin, things – rocks, planters, even the massive mountains and Urithiru itself, imploded into beads of dark glass. Only the white stone of the Oathgate platform remained intact, it and the nine others hovering in a half-arc around him. Above and around Adolin was the black sky of Shadesmar. Far below the Oathgate platform, the glittering sea of beads reflected the dim sun of Shadesmar, stretching as far as the eye could see. In front of him, countless tiny flames spread in a kind of half- curve, the souls of the humans who inhabited Urithiru.

Adolin glanced around. "Where are… Ah." There, standing half a step behind him, were two figures. One wearing too-stiff robes that seemed carved of stone rather than of cloth, with a constantly-changing sigil where his head should be. Shallan's spren, Pattern. And next to him stood what looked like a young woman made of countless finger-thick brownish cords, her nails made of dull crystal and her face marred like a painting whose eyes had been scraped off. Mayalaran, the deadeye spren of Adolin's sword.

Like all deadeyes, Maya had once been the bonded companion of one of the Knights Radiant, before the Radiants had abandoned their oaths, tearing apart the bond and trapping their spren in mindless agony. The more he learned of the Radiants, the less Adolin could understand that. He knew why they'd done it: the revelation that humankind was not native to Roshar, that uncontrolled Surgebinding had destroyed their first world, that they'd fled to Roshar and taken it from the singers who had welcomed them. The ancient Radiants had believed their war won, that the Fused were trapped by the Oathpact and the singers defeated by the sealing away of Ba-Ado-Mishram, and they had sought to remove the last true threat to humanity: their own powers. Noble motives, perhaps. But could any motive excuse visiting such agony on spren such as Maya?

Never mind that, Adolin thought. He didn't need to understand why the ancient Radiants had broken their oaths. What mattered was that, here and now, he might have a chance to undo this tiny part of their betrayal. Before, at Thaylen City, Maya had shown flashes of… herself. She had attacked one of Odium's Fused for Adolin, had whispered her name in his mind and come to him with less than the normal ten heartbeats. The scholars, his cousin and his wife, spoke of Connection, theorized that Adolin's focus and attention were restoring the ripped-out portions of Maya's soul. And now, Adolin hoped he could finish the process.

He turned to face Maya and took a breath. He knew the Words to say, the Ideals by which a Radiant bonded their spren. But as he prepared to speak them, they felt… off… in his mouth.

This isn't a normal bonding, he thought. This is mending what was broken, not creating something new. Maya will still, will always, remember what was done to her.

New Words came to him, and he spoke them clearly. "From death, spring new life. In weakness, find new strength. The destination reached, let the journey begin anew."

To fast to see, Maya's arm whipped forward, her hand tightening around his wrist, chipped crystal nails digging into his arm. Instinctively, Adolin's own hand tightened around Maya's arm, and pain slammed into him.

One.

This was like no pain Adolin had ever before felt. It was as if every inch of his body was simultaneously burnt and flayed and jabbed with needles.

Two

And layered over the top of the physical pain was every kind of mental agony. The betrayal of Sadeas abandoning him and his father on the Shattered Plains, the guilt of knowing that he had broken the Codes and betrayed his father's values, the grief of seeing his cousin die in Kholinar, the horror when he had believed his father's visions were the first signs of delusion, the echoing absence when he'd believed Shallan dead in the chasms and the dull resignation when he'd believed she'd love Kaladin Stormblessed, every kind of shock or suffering or remorse blended together, all that forced itself into Adolin's mind.

Three

And yet he held on. For he could feel Mayalaran's mind now, feel her stronger than ever before, and he knew that she felt this same agony, and that to release her now would be to leave her alone in that suffering.

Four

They were both screaming now, Maya's inhuman screech twined with his bellows of pain to echo across Shadesmar.

Five

He could still feel Shallan's touch on his shoulder, feel something flowing out of her and through him into Maya. Stormlight?

Six

Now he seemed to be seeing with double vision. He could still see into Shadesmar, still see Maya standing before him with their arms clasped, but he could also see the Physical, see the Oathgate platform as it was in the real world. The gemstones in the bag at his feet had gone dun, and a vaguely sword-shaped mass of white light blazed in his outstretched hand, almost too bright to look at, pulsing in time to the beats of his heart.

Seven

He had to hold on.

Eight

No matter what, he would not let Maya go.

Nine

"I will not let you be forgotten," he whispered.

Ten

There was a sudden flash, an explosion of Stormlight that drove Shallan back a step, and the pain vanished like it had never been. Suddenly, Adolin was back in the Physical, an intricate glyph he did not recognize traced in frost on the Oathgate platform in front of him. In his hand was Maya's sword form: massive like all dead blades, with a sinuously rippling cutting edge and designs like ridges of crystal along the back. The only difference from its previous state was an intricate pattern of blood-red light, like coiling vines, along both sides of the blade.

Ow? a voice said in Adolin's mind.

"Maya?" Adolin whispered, gloryspren bursting into existence around him like glowing golden spheres, intermixed with joyspren like showers of blue leaves. "You're… alive? Articulate?"

Apparently? the voice whispered in Adolin's head, sounding just as baffled as he. He felt a slight prod from the Blade, and mentally stepped back. Maya's sword-form shimmered in Adolin's hand, shrinking to the length of a normal side-sword. Then she dissolved into red light and reformed as a harpoon, with wicked barbs along the sides of the head and that same pattern of coiling vines etched in crimson light up the shaft and along the flat of the head. Finally, she collapsed into a coil of green vines, studded along their length with luminous red crystals, that twined around Adolin's arm and twisted into a feminine face on the back of his hand.

"Amazing," Shallan said. Adolin turned to face his wife, and saw the smokelike blue ring of an awespren puff out above her head. "It worked, then? Mayalaran…" she started. Though Adolin couldn't see any difference, he guessed Maya must have made herself visible to Shallan. "Mayalaran seems to have regained her sapience," she said, rummaging through her pack. "And you can summon her as a Blade, so either you managed to effectively swear three Ideals at once, or else… something entirely novel has happened, again. Aha!"

She produced a small box of silvery metal, which she opened to reveal a couple of diamond broams, blazing white.

"Aluminum," she said. "Kept the Light from being pulled out when you were… uh, whatever you did to bring Maya back. See if you can inhale this now."

She set the box on the ground, and Adolin concentrated on those broams, imagining the Light flowing out of them and into him, filling him with power. He inhaled sharply, exactly as he'd seen Radiants and squires do. The light of the broams didn't even flicker. He tried again, but still nothing.

"Interesting," Shallan said, rapidly scratching notes in the flowing women's script. "Further testing will be needed, obviously, but this preliminary result would indicate that this new bond hasn't made you a Surgebinder. You can transform Maya, obviously, and summon and dismiss her at will without needing the ten heartbeats, but you don't seem to have any of the other powers the bond would grant. And Maya's coloration is certainly odd… can I see her Blade form again?"

At a thought from Adolin, Maya exploded out into her massive six-foot Blade form. Shallan blinked in the deliberate fashion Adolin had learnt to recognize as the taking of a Memory, then leaned in close, staring with fascination at the crimson etchings along the sides of the Blade. "Normally, a cultivationspren in Blade form will glow white," she remarked. "I wonder why Maya… oh, that must be it. According to what little we know from the spren, and especially from Jasnah's researches, red can connote corrupted Investiture…" she blushed slightly. "Though 'altered' might be the better term in this case," she added quickly. "Power that has been changed from its original state, remade into something new."

"That would certainly make sense," Adolin remarked. "Come on," he added, dismissing the Mayablade and grabbing the pack full of dun gemstones. "Jasnah's going to be fascinated to find out what we did here, and I'm looking forward to introducing Maya to the Radiants."

"I'm looking forward to being introduced," Maya commented from where she looped back and forth across the Oathgate platform.

Adolin laughed. "I'll bet you are."