Cover of The Sunlit Man

The Sunlit Man

by Brandon Sanderson


Genre
Fantasy, Science Fiction
Year
2023
Pages
400
Contents

277

Overview

Beacon clears the mountain but exhausts its water supply and plummets into the mountain’s shadow. Inside the depressurized cabin, Nomad finds Elegy unconscious and the overheated engines locked. Defying Auxiliary’s urgings, he waits for thicker air to cool the system, reignites four engines, but the ship still crashes.

Summary

Beacon slips over the mountain’s tip but immediately runs out of water, losing both lift and coolant. The ship plunges into the mountain’s shadowed crater-slope, sparing it from direct sunlight but leaving Nomad in an uncontrolled descent. He traverses the deck in free fall and reenters through the Dawnchaser’s door.

Inside, Nomad finds the cabin fully depressurized and Elegy unconscious in a corner. He reaches the controls and discovers the conventional engines have stalled and locked from overheating after running dry in vacuum. Warning lights flash; restarting too early could destroy the machinery.

Auxiliary urgently presses Nomad to hit the reignition button, but Nomad resists, reasoning they need denser air to cool the superheated system. As the ship drops and wind howls outside, he watches the temperature indicators creep from red toward orange.

When the gauges cross his threshold, Nomad slams the restart. Four of the ten remaining engines roar to life, rattling the ship as they struggle to arrest the fall.

Despite partial thrust, Beacon cannot recover in time. The ship impacts the ground, ending the desperate descent in a crash.

Who Appears

  • Nomad
    Protagonist; reenters the ship during free fall, assesses overheated engines, times the restart, and triggers four to fire before the crash.
  • Auxiliary (the knight)
    Disembodied companion urging Nomad to restart immediately; provides tense counterpoint to Nomad’s calculated delay.
  • Elegy
    Ally found unconscious in the depressurized cabin during the descent.
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