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Kaladin crashes down beside Dalinar to find Amaram on his knees, having just swallowed Odium's smokestone. The duel that follows is two-Bladed and savage: Amaram wields Oathbringer in one hand and Helaran's curved Blade in the other, then loses one to Syl's improvised tined shield. Amethyst crystals burst out of his armor across his arms and back; his boots shatter and he glides over the stone; he liquefies rock under Kaladin's feet to lock him in place, then sets the very air on fire. Kaladin must break off again and again to drive Fused back from Dalinar in the red mist.

Adolin is healed at Renarin's hands and finds himself standing next to a glowing illusion of himself wearing a Kholin uniform — a Windrunner he could not be. He summons his deadeye Blade, thanks her, and walks into the Low Ward to gather Thaylen soldiers, cut down red-eyed Sadeas troops, and rescue Queen Fen's son Kdralk and his men from a corner against the wall.

Szeth and Lift chase the King's Drop through an Abrasion-using Fused, catch her, lose it to a flock of intercepting Fused — and switch the real ruby out for an illusion-cloaked rock during Szeth's feigned crash. Szeth flies Lift back toward the red mist; he cannot follow her in — the whispers in it stop him, fearspren bubbling up — and she walks the rest of the way alone.

With more Stormlight inside her than she has ever held, Jasnah holds the rent in the wall — Soulcasting charging Sadeas men to smoke at a thought, growing a wall of black pitch and igniting it, and finally pulling axi of air together to seal the entire breach in polished bronze melded to the stonework. Adolin reaches Navani and Fen atop the wall, confirms Elhokar is gone, and lays out a command position: archers on the wall, Kdralk to take up a fallen Shardblade and clear the Low Ward in rescue parties, while Adolin himself heads uphill toward the thunderclast still smashing the city.

Shallan spreads a pool of Stormlight across the ground and pulls from it every person she has ever sketched — sailors, maids, scribes, Reachers, the honorspren who held Syl captive, her brothers, her parents. When other versions of herself start to crawl up too, Veil takes one of her hands and Radiant takes the other, and the three together hold the army standing — hundreds of glowing figures, each loaned a sliver of her — and absorb the bloodlusted Sadeas troops in a painted battlefield of false dying.

Adolin climbs the swath of destruction the thunderclast has cut up through the Loft Wards. A black-skirted Thaylen Shardbearer — Hrdalm — pulls him into a building, and the two improvise: Hrdalm tanking, Adolin cutting. He speaks to the Blade and hears one word on the wind in answer — *Mayalaran* — her name. He hands Maya to Hrdalm when his own armor finally fails him, and takes up a spear instead.

Renarin reaches the Oathgate to find twelve Fused hovering above it in salute. A new fit takes him; the stained-glass future tiles the air around him. He reads it and smiles — and as he steps forward, light blooms from the Oathgate platform and resolves into Teft, bearded, glowing white, Stormlight rising from him, a silvery crossguarded spren-spear in his hand. *Like a Herald from lore.* Behind him, an entire division of Kholin blue.

With Teft and Bridge Four in the air over the city and General Khal's Alethi division on the ground, Renarin coordinates from a scribe station and receives a long suffocating hug from Rock, who has carried Teft all the way down from the tower on his shoulders. Renarin catches up to the thunderclast with Adolin and Hrdalm — *I can handle it, Adolin. Please go* — and shockingly charges the monster alone. Together they hack out its legs; Renarin climbs to the next tier, raises a fist of light to its molten red eyes, and the thing sighs out.

Shallan's army falters as the last Stormlight runs out and a hulking Fused regroups the enemy. Jasnah steps in between her and three more, burns the ground at their feet, and tries to draw her back to the wall; Radiant is the one she can feel. They climb up Soulcast steps as Jasnah lectures on the discipline of Soulcasting each Essence in turn, then apologises for lecturing in a battle.

Venli creeps away from the field beneath Odium's storm; rhythms riot inside her — Craving, Fury, Ridicule, Agony — until she grabs the Rhythm of the Lost and clings to it. Looking down at her reflection she sees: her eyes do not glow red. Dalinar Kholin's words come back through the column of gloryspren — *you can change, you can become a better person, I did* — and she whispers her way into the First Ideal: *Life. Life before death. Strength before … weakness. Jou—*. A Fused interrupts to threaten her for failing the Word of Passion. She chooses. She walks aboard a ship in a forbidden form, hearing the Rhythm of Joy; Timbre pulses Resolve, then Victory, inside her gemheart — somehow holding a Voidspren captive there.

Lift reaches Dalinar in the red mist and presses the King's Drop into his hand. *Bless you.* He thinks of what Taravangian once said about capturing spren — lure them with something they love — and lifts the ruby. *I embrace you. I accept what I was. Thank you for giving me strength when I needed it. Now, old friend, it is time to rest.* The Thrill floods into the gemstone. It implodes; the storm overhead goes still.

Amaram's breastplate explodes inward under Syl's hammer-blow, leaving his chest cavity hollow around a single pulsing amethyst. He fights on with Oathbringer — *I'm a patriot* — and stumbles up to a fallen Kaladin with the Blade raised. *Bridge Four*, Kaladin whispers. An arrow goes through Amaram's skull, then another through the gemstone heart, and the amethyst explodes. On the rubble behind, Rock stands with Amaram's massive Shardbow — a beacon in the dark.

All across the field the red light in Amaram's soldiers' eyes goes out together; many fall to their knees retching. The Fused retreat to the ships; the parshmen go with them. The black storm rolls impotent over the island and out east.

The clouds thin. A finger of sun reaches the field. Dalinar kneels with the great ruby cradled in his hands, the Thrill caged inside it glowing phantom red, Lift's small hand on his shoulder. He is crying. *It is over, Captain*, he tells Kaladin when he comes over. *It's over.*