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TenSoon is marched onto the central platform of the Trustwarren for his trial. He has been here before — he is of the Third Generation, born seven centuries ago, when the kandra were still new — but never so close to the centre. The platform is a steel disk set into the floor, only a foot high but ten across, slick and cold under his bare feet, with a small round hole cut into its surface near where he stops. He realises what is under it: the Trust itself, the thing the First Generation keep in a chamber beneath the platform, that the Trustwarren is built around. The hole in the steel is the only access. He stands directly over it.

The chamber is lit not by glowstone but by blue-glass lamps; oil is precious in the Homeland, and the Second Generation do not want to be dependent on humans for supplies. Across the room from him the twenty members of the Second Generation stand at tiered lecterns of stone, their crystal True Bodies catching the blue light. They are close enough to read his face. He is far enough away to feel alone in the centre of the world. The First Generation are above him, in shadowed alcoves cut into the upper wall, seated so deep into the dark that he can see only the suggestion of humanoid shapes. They will not speak. Speaking, in this chamber, is what the Seconds are for. The Seconds' spokesman is KanPaar — tall, with bones of deep red crystal, his accent preserved by long avoidance of humans so that it resembles, supposedly, the Father's. KanPaar asks formally whether TenSoon insists on this trial. TenSoon says he does. KanPaar bows up to the alcoves of the First Generation and sighs, audibly, in the manner of a long-suffering man finally about to be vindicated.

The doors behind TenSoon open and his people file in. He cannot watch most of them — the platform faces the Seconds — but he can hear them, and the sound of it is, in a small way, his victory. The youngest kandra are not permitted at a hearing of this gravity, but every Generation from the second on down is entitled to attend, and they have come. The earliest Generations — Firsts, Seconds, Thirds — are small in number, since many of them died in the first centuries when humans still feared the kandra enough to kill any they could find. The later Generations are populous: the Tenth alone is over a hundred strong. The Trustwarren's benches were built to hold the entire people, and today they fill with whoever happens to be free of Contract or duty. They are several hundred. This is what TenSoon wanted.

He wanted them because the trial is not for him. He will not win it. The Second Generation have already decided what he is, and the Firsts have given the Seconds their authority for centuries; whatever he says in his own defence, KanPaar has been waiting his whole life for exactly this case to make his lifelong argument with. The argument is that the Third Generation are the Seconds' worst mistake: that the Seconds gave the Thirds too much freedom, allowed them to think themselves the Seconds' equals, and that the rest of the Generations should look at the Third's most public failure and remember not to follow them. By making TenSoon — the Third of best reputation, the one who least liked Homeland politics — into the proof, KanPaar wins the argument for good. KanPaar does not look worried. He looks pleased. TenSoon reads this off him at the lectern as easily as he reads a translation off a sign.

What TenSoon is here for, instead, is the people on the benches. The Fourths are nearly as loyal to the Seconds as the Fifths are, and the deviant members among them are few. But the younger Generations — Sevenths and after — have begun pushing the Seconds in ways the Seconds find offensive: building True Bodies in strange materials, making themselves visibly less human in the very design that should reassure the Father's people that they belong to him. TenSoon, once a traditionalist, finds himself grateful for them today. He wants the trial to be heard by exactly the kandra most likely to take from it the lesson the Seconds would prefer they not.

He had hoped MeLaan, in particular, would not come. She does. She is in fact among the first through the doors, wearing a new True Body he barely recognises — bones of pale wood, willowy and long, her skull pulled to a triangular point, twisted cloth standing in for hair where a human would have it — one of the Seventh Generation rebellions made flesh. She freezes a moment in the doorway, looking at him on the platform, and for a heartbeat he is afraid she will run to him there, which is not done. Instead she finds a seat near the front with a group of other Sevenths in their own deliberately unhuman bodies — one nearly cubic, one with four arms — and watches. The fact that he can smile at her unhuman bones today is its own kind of admission, he realises, that he is no longer the Third he used to be.

KanPaar reads the form of the proceedings into the chamber. TenSoon has obstinately demanded judgment before the First Generation; the First Contract requires that the Firsts be given the chance to stay his punishment before the Seconds may impose it. If the Firsts stay him, he goes free. Otherwise the Seconds' fate stands. Does TenSoon understand? He does. KanPaar leans forward on the stone of his lectern and says they will begin.

He thinks, with something close to dark amusement, that the Seconds have not even thought to ask why he is so eager for the trial. They have always read him as a quiet Third, serving his Contracts, staying out of Homeland politics — the Third of best reputation, the one least like the deviants the Seconds were afraid of producing. They are still reading him that way. They are about to discover that the Third of best reputation is, when finally pushed onto a platform with nothing left to lose, also the most dangerous one to put there.

TenSoon feels the moment for what it is. The Seconds have come into this expecting a ritual reaffirmation of their authority, and a clean sacrifice of the troublesome Third who has handed them the case they have always wanted. They are about to be surprised.

The chapter closes on a further excerpt of "the Hero of Ages." The writer reflects on the small lone nugget of Allomantic power Rashek left at the Well — whether it was oversight or precaution, the writer cannot tell — and gives unfeigned thanks for its having been there, since without it Elend would have died at the Well.