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Twenty-nine years before the main story, Dalinar kneels at an incense brazier outside Gavilar's warcamp while his betrothed Evi burns tiny folded glyphs and asks the One to soften his temper. Dalinar mouths a soldier's prayer of his own, suffers a public chaste kiss for the sake of the elites watching, and pockets a glyphward Navani has slipped him in case Evi's foreign script gets the wording wrong. Gavilar's head ardent Jevena is comfortable with the arrangement — *it is wisdom to bring her to Vorin truth* — and Dalinar wonders idly what it would take to actually scandalize an ardent. He turns away from his near-wife with the prayer unburned and walks out across an unfamiliar plain of hiding grass to where the largest army he has ever faced is forming up.

Mounted with Gavilar down the Kholin lines, Dalinar passes Ilamar's fifty cavalrymen with their Shardbearer-hooks, and Tearim wearing the spare Plate that belongs technically to Evi. The brothers see a herd of musicspren-trailed Ryshadium gallop across the field, too rare to bother trying to take, and discuss the day's task: Highprince Kalanor himself must fall. The line will go to his cousin Loradar Vamah, who will swear. Gavilar notes that Sebarial — Dalinar's *young friend* — has invented a supply problem and missed yet another chance to pick a side. *Bring me Kalanor,* Gavilar says, and lets the Blackthorn off the leash.

The opening of the battle goes to a newer Kholin order of fight: armored block at the center, fast archer companies flanking and shredding the wings, infantry positioning more than punishing. Dalinar dismounts to wait, the Thrill rising under his skin, and picks his moment when a stretch of Kholin spearmen begins to crack. He kicks his big black warhorse into a gallop, hits the enemy block like a storm hitting paper — and gives himself to the Thrill entirely. Eyes burn out, arms drop, his horse breaks its back coming down off a pile of corpses. A redness rises at the edges of his vision and a rhythm he cannot place sets the timing of his sword. He hears Kadash shouting his name from a great distance, ignores it, finally lowers his sword — and only then sees the field. Hundreds of dead with shriveled coals for eyes. Grass already nosing up between the fingers and faces. And among them, three men in Kholin blue, the elites' armband still on. He killed his own and never noticed.

Kadash points him at the silver-on-red Kalanor banner — at last forced into the fight by his own routed companies — and Dalinar hands off his helm long enough to drink a waterskin dry, then orders his men pulled back. *Do not engage unless I fall.* He runs alone toward a row of weathered stone spires at the east edge of the field. At their base Highprince Kalanor dismounts from a white Ryshadium, silver-leafed Plate gleaming, long thin glyph-etched Shardblade in hand, and they trade taunts about religion and kingship. Dalinar takes Bloodstance; Kalanor surprises him by choosing the same, and they batter at one another's left sides until each man's Plate there leaks light.

Dalinar lands one ringing overhand power swing that explodes the section away in molten sparks, and Kalanor breaks off — sprinting through his own honor guard, sending men sprawling — and starts up the bare face of the rock spire. Dalinar follows, both Blades dismissed, climbing parallel until Kalanor tries to kick rocks and re-summon Blade to chop him down off the wall. At the top: a row of broken peaks too narrow to stand on, a windspren zipping past, the field of his own victory laid out a hundred feet below. Kalanor shifts to Windstance, hoping wind and unsteady footing will do what his sword has not. Dalinar takes Stonestance and trades blows along the line of peaks, scoring Kalanor's helm until it shatters. They lock weapons, shove chest to chest — and in Kalanor's grey eyes Dalinar sees the same thing he himself feels. Kalanor knows the Thrill too. The Alethi *secret edge.* It enrages him to share it with this man.

He shoves. Kalanor slips, drops his Blade, catches the rim by the fingers. *Mercy.* *This is a mercy,* Dalinar says, and rams Oathbringer through his face. The highprince's eyes burn from grey to black as he falls, trailing twin lines of smoke past the broken spire.

Dalinar climbs down spent and hollow. *That's it?* whispers something inside him. *Weren't we promised more?* Below, a cluster in Kalanor's colors has reached the body and is squabbling over the Plate. They are his kill, his Shards. He drops on them in a half-blind rage, takes the Blade from one, runs down the two who try to flee, and then turns — the Thrill still climbing — and sees a small unflagged knot of Kholin blue resting behind the lines. In its center, helm off, his brother. Shouldn't the strongest rule? Hadn't he won everything that mattered, including the woman he was forced to give up? Passionspren drop around him like glass petals. He starts toward Gavilar at a run, and the men in the king's escort raise empty hands in welcome — too slow to stop the Blackthorn from killing them all.

Gavilar turns. He sees his brother in Plate and grins, open and honest. Dalinar lurches to a stop and lets Oathbringer vanish. *Oh, Stormfather. What am I doing?* No shamespren come; a single petal of one drifts down later, when Gavilar is hailing him in front of his soldiers for the kill. Dalinar grabs his brother by the arm and forces the won Blade and Plate on him. *A gift. For your children.* Gavilar laughs, and accepts. The wedding to Evi will happen within the month, he says; her brother Toh will finally have to agree they can protect his line. And Alethkar will at last bow to one king.

Dalinar sits on a stone, helm off, accepting water from a young messenger. And he swears it to himself, where only he can hear: *I give way for Gavilar in all things. Let him have the throne, let him have love. I must never be king.*