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TenSoon stands cold and naked on the platform in the Trustwarren as KanPaar opens the judgment with a question TenSoon had not expected: not why he betrayed all his people, but why he killed OreSeur — a kandra of his own generation. TenSoon answers plainly that the First Contract forbids only the killing of humans, and that he was compelled by Contract: KanPaar himself had assigned him to Straff Venture, who passed him to his unstable son Zane, who ordered TenSoon to take OreSeur's place so that TenSoon could spy on Vin inside her own household. He grieves it even as he defends it — OreSeur had been his generation brother for seven hundred years — but he refuses to pretend the act was forbidden by their law.

The Seconds press back. One spits that humans and koloss kill their own because they are creatures of Ruin; kandra, the chosen people of Preservation, do not. Another calls it a disturbing precedent — the first use of a kandra to impersonate another kandra — and warns that if humans were to begin issuing such Contracts, the entire people could be wiped out within a few years. TenSoon should, they insist, have refused on the spot and demanded clarification of the Contract's silence. As they speak, TenSoon sees the shape of their plan: establish him as a traitor first, so that anything he says afterwards arrives already discredited. He decides it is time to start behaving like the Third he is.

He turns the question back on KanPaar. If rashness is the charge, what of the Second Generation who, for the wealth, assigned a kandra servant to Kelsier himself — the man planning to kill the Father? HunFoor, the dimmer of the Seconds, blurts a defensive line about how well the man had paid; KanPaar cuts him off with a sharp wave and forbids TenSoon further accusations. This is not a trial, KanPaar tells him — he has admitted his guilt. It is a judgment.

KanPaar turns to what they both know is the real charge: that TenSoon, the Contract-abiding kandra, broke Contract with Zane to help his enemy. TenSoon denies it. He did not break his Contract — he served a greater one. The First Contract did not die with the Father; it passed to the one who took the Father's place. Vin, the Heir of the Survivor who killed the Lord Ruler and inherited everything that had been his, is now the kandra people's Mother. He had owed her loyalty from the moment she took the Father's place. He had expected outcries of blasphemy. Instead he gets stupefied silence — KanPaar behind the lectern, the First Generation motionless in their alcoves above.

TenSoon presses through. The mists no longer behave as they have for a thousand years; the Father is dead; the time the kandra Worldbringers spoke of — perhaps the time for the Resolution — has come. Then, before KanPaar can choke him off, he says aloud the thing he was brought here to keep buried. He told Vin the kandra Secret. She used it on him as the Allomancers of old had used the Flaw — taking complete control of his body, making him fight Zane for her — and she certainly has told others. Soon, all humans will know how to dominate them. He did it, he shouts over KanPaar's attempts to silence him, because she had the right to know: she is the Mother, the Trust is hers, the kandra cannot even create new kandra without her. The Resolution is coming. They should go to her.

KanPaar bellows him quiet. TenSoon stands breathing into the silence, feeling how inadequate it is to scream a thousand-year revelation at a hostile chamber. He turns to the alcoves above. The First Contract requires that the First Generation be given the chance to stay his punishment. They give no motion and no sound. KanPaar smiles. The Firsts have ignored his plea; the Seconds will sentence on their behalf, in a month's time. TenSoon frowns at the delay — a month? why? — and bows his head. He had his say. The kandra now know the Secret is out. Perhaps it will shake some of them. He will likely never know.

The chapter closes on a further excerpt of "the Hero of Ages." The writer turns to Rashek's cleverest piece of misdirection: knowing the Well's power would one day return, he moved the Well itself — pushing the mountains of Terris up in the north, flattening his old homeland to build his capital on, and constructing his palace around an inner chamber modelled on his old Terris hovel as a final refuge made in the last moments before his power ran out.