Raoden dreams of the time when he broke his leg and his parents brought him to Elantris. He was dazzled by the bright beauty of the city. The healer drew a symbol in the air above him that glowed “as if a river of light were trying to force its way through the small crack” (253). Raoden wakes feeling a wave of pain that pushes at him. It is unlike the pain that other Elantrians describe.

His efforts elsewhere are paying off with clean and repaired buildings, shoes, and corn planted for food. Each citizen has a job and a purpose. Raoden is their leader, but everyone works together; there is no rank. Raoden declares he will not build a society built on death. He gathers the fallen of Elantris, those whose pain has made them weak and mindless—the Hoed—and brings them to a central hall where they can be cared for. Their pained mutterings are difficult to hear, but Raoden thinks the worse pain is that they have given up.

He continues to study AonDor, “increasingly convinced that the ancient magic of the characters held the secret of Elantris’s fall” (261). Galloden explains that Dor is an unseen power that controls everything.