POV: dalinar
Summary
Dalinar steps onto the rubble of the broken wall and finds the Sadeas army holding short of him in uneven, snarling ranks, ignoring even the spilled wealth of the broken Gemstone Reserve at their feet. Lift appears at his elbow, weaponless but offering Wyndle as a metal pole and her own awesomeness. Dalinar sends her after the Fused who escaped with the King's Drop — she can move the way that one does — and turns back to the figure materialising in front of him, gold and white, leaning on a scepter.
On the Shadesmar bridge, Adolin tries to pass as one of Shallan's illusions, swinging his harpoon at nothing alongside the false soldiers. A Fused cuts her own hand and flings orange blood across the figures; it splatters on Adolin's cheek. He fends off the first lance with his harpoon and a knife, but is run through the gut and dropped. Out of the rubble of the air Adolin's deadeye spren launches at the Fused from behind — scratched-out eyes, claws, screaming — and drives him back long enough for Adolin to lurch toward Shallan.
Shallan cannot move the gatekeepers — the device is closed by Honor himself and they will not break that — and her illusions are dissolving. A Fused dives for her; reaching for Pattern by instinct she instead pulls a wall of worked stone out of Shadesmar through a bead from her pocket, and the Fused smacks into it. Pattern notes that the beads here are more minds than souls; the wall won't last. She finds Adolin bleeding and dives with him under the bridge through a hallway in the depths of the beads toward Kaladin.
Lift slicks her knees and slides through Amaram's soldiers in pursuit of the Fused woman who carries the King's Drop — a Fused who slides smoothly across the rock, more awesome than Lift herself. She admits to Wyndle that the Nightwatcher lied: she is growing older.
High above the field, Szeth hovers beside Nin. The Skybreakers will swear to the Dawnsingers now that the parshmen have returned. Szeth asks whether he may swear his Third Ideal to a person rather than to a law; Nin says some have, and warns that he himself is getting worse.
In the bead sea Kaladin sinks until Syl hauls him out by the coat. Shallan crosses to him with Adolin dying on his back. There is no Stormlight left between them; the six Fused above the bridge are landing. Syl grips his shoulder and tells him to say the Words.
Odium walks up to Dalinar flanked by Venli and a black smoke spren, naming Fused orders aloud — Yushah to guard the prison, Kai-garnis to climb back to the Oathgate. Then he turns to Dalinar in genial welcome. Dalinar remembers the Almighty's advice — appoint a champion, give him something to lose — and proposes a test of champions for the fate of Roshar. Two gloryspren swing down and orbit him. Dalinar confirms it is his true desire. Odium agrees — easily.
Lift is caught between Amaram's troops and one of the thunderclasts; the great stone hand crushes her legs. As she lies waiting for Stormlight to knit her, an explosion of black-and-white smoke drops out of the air and splits the monster in two. Szeth stands in its smoke with the strange jet Blade that drinks the smoke down into itself and pours it out below as liquid darkness. Lift recognises the Assassin in White; he tells her to stand — the Blackthorn has set them a task.
Szeth mostly lays waste to red-eyed soldiers; anyone the sword so much as nicks puffs to black smoke, and a sense of murderous appetite calls to him from the weapon. The Fused woman with the gemstone eludes them, slipping over the stone and parrying Szeth's sword with its own sheath. Black veins begin to creep up his arm as the sword feeds on his Stormlight.
Jasnah stops one pace behind Renarin in the temple. Ivory confirms it: Renarin sees not what is but what is to come, an Odium power.
Kaladin tries to say the Words. He thinks of bridgemen he failed — Malop, Jaks, Beld and Pedin — and the slaves before them, and Tien. Windspren gather around him as lines of light. The Words will not come.
Lift catches up to Szeth as he goes down, the sword crawling up his arm to his throat. She takes his head in her hands and pours her own Investiture into him; the sword drinks of her freely too, and the black veins climb her fingers.
Renarin sees panels of stained glass tile the air around him — past, present, what is to come. The next panel shows Jasnah strike him down with her Blade; the one beside it shows his father knelt before a god of gold and white. Renarin welcomes the strike. He whispers what he sees: Dalinar Kholin is no more — already fallen — Odium's champion in his black armor and nine shadows.
Venli watches as Dalinar sags forward, head bowed. Odium tells the Fused they have a leader; Turash objects to following a human and is reminded that Odium gives him persistent life and may withdraw it. Then Amaram arrives in Plate with the silvery sheath; Odium thanks him and offers him a smokestone gemstone to swallow — the fulfillment of an old promise — to bond Yelig-nar and try to control whoever follows. Amaram takes it.
Kaladin can think only of Dalinar — and finally whispers, weeping, that he cannot say those Words. He is not strong enough to lose him or save him. Syl's arms fold around him from behind.
Jasnah raises her Blade over Renarin — and then Renarin turns, meets her eyes, and nods. Suddenly she sees the small solemn cousin who once wept on her shoulder for a father who didn't seem able to feel love. Jasnah dismisses her Blade. Ivory, reappearing on her collar, is stunned: it is not what makes sense, yet it is right. Renarin sobs into her shoulder. "My vision was wrong about you," he says. "What I see — it can be wrong."
Trembling, Dalinar opens his bloodied fist on a single gloryspren. The most important step is the next one, always the next one. He forces air into his lungs and answers the god with a single ragged sentence. *You cannot have my pain.*