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Dalinar tells Odium he is wrong. Odium grips his shoulder and asks what *she* says, and a flood of memory crashes in: a soldier stabbed in the back trying to crawl away, a poleaxe through a highlord who held Teleb's loyalty, a fight on a rock formation against another man who knew the Thrill, a man broken in a tavern, Gavilar shouted at in anger and lust. Each death, Odium says, was his — *I was with you then*. Dalinar should give the pain to him and never feel guilty again. Dalinar hugs *The Way of Kings* to his chest and refuses, so Odium takes him back to the day he killed Evi.

Szeth makes his choice by giving the choice away — handing his judgment over to Dalinar Kholin — and wades through the red-eyed army with the sword screaming for destruction. Anyone he so much as nicks puffs to black smoke; a phantom thirst calls him to revel in the butchery. The Fused woman with the gemstone slides over the rock as if it were greased, takes the sword's sheath from his back, and parries his strikes with it. Black veins climb Szeth's arm.

Behind Renarin in the temple, Jasnah hears him whisper for his father. Ivory tells her the spren in him sees not what is but what is to come — an Odium power.

In an Alethi camp tent in the Low Ward, Ash stops to gouge out her own face on a metal brazier rim before she can move on. In the tent she finds Taln sitting in the dim, the Herald who was never supposed to bear their burden and bore it longest anyway. She takes his hand. He keeps reciting that the Return is at hand, that Kalak will teach them to cast bronze.

Kaladin kneels on the obsidian as six Fused descend. He tries again to whisper the Words — Malop, Jaks, Beld and Pedin, the slaves before them, Tien. Two windspren gather as lines of light. He stutters.

Wyndle cries to Cultivation over what Szeth is doing to the field. Lift watches the killing wind down until Szeth sags to his knees, the sword feasting up his arm and consuming his Stormlight. She runs to him, takes his head in her hands and breathes life into him; the sword drinks of her freely too, and the black veins climb her fingers.

In the chamber at the base of the wall, bound and gagged with Fen and Kmakl, Navani eases her safehand free, primes her painrial, and drops all three Sadeas soldiers — including a captain hoping to deliver two queens to Amaram — in screaming spasms. She cuts the queen's bonds, draws the pain of her own gash out, and they bar themselves back atop the wall to survey the streets. Looking down at the red-eyed troops Navani knows what she is seeing: Odium has learned to possess men. And below — alone in front of something vast and angry — Dalinar.

Dalinar lives in two places at once. In the present he begs Odium not to make him live it again. In the past he walks back to the Rift coated in blood with the Thrill glowing red in his eyes, orders the oil brought, and turns toward a city where Evi is imprisoned and children sleep. Lightning blasts *The Way of Kings* out of his hands and the sun passes behind the storm. Odium pries the Stormfather from him. *Let go.* Dalinar tears off his fingernails on the stone and it does not help; he knows what he is.

Teft huddles in a dark corner of Urithiru and listens to Bridge Four dying.

Szeth tries to walk toward Dalinar and falls. Lift's small hands cradle his head; the sword drinks of her too.

Renarin does not want to die — but, strangely, welcomes Jasnah's strike. Better that than to live and see what is coming to his father: black armor, a plague, the Blackthorn returned with nine shadows. Odium's champion. He whispers aloud that Dalinar Kholin is no more.

Venli sees Dalinar slump twenty yards away. Odium steps back and tells the Fused they have a leader. Turash resents following a human and is reminded that his persistent life is on loan. Then Amaram arrives in Plate, faceplate up, red-eyed, dropping the silvery sheath at Odium's feet. He is offered an uncut smokestone and told to swallow it — the fulfillment of an old promise, the bond of Yelig-nar — with the warning that the queen at Kholinar tried this and the power consumed her. Amaram asks whether he can someday kill Dalinar; *someday*, Odium says.

Kaladin thinks of Dalinar and finally whispers, weeping, that he cannot say the Words. He cannot lose him; he cannot save him. Syl folds her arms around him from behind.

Jasnah raises her Blade over Renarin and prepares to make it quick. Renarin turns, tears on his face, and nods. Suddenly she sees the small solemn cousin who once wept on her shoulder for a father who never seemed able to love. A pair of gloryspren drift through the temple. Jasnah dismisses her Blade and pulls him into an embrace. Ivory is stunned: it makes no sense, and yet it is right. Renarin looks up. His vision was wrong about her — what he sees can be wrong.

Alone in the mist Dalinar holds a fist to his chest. Something stirs inside it; he opens bleeding fingers on a single gloryspren. *The most important step a man can take is the next one — always the next.* Trembling, bleeding, agonised, he forces air into his lungs and answers the god with a single ragged sentence. *You cannot have my pain.*