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A POV-roving aftermath chapter, opening and closing on Moash in Kholinar and threading through every Radiant in Thaylen City.

Moash hacks fallen pillars in the wrecked east wing of the Kholinar palace, the floor near him still stained where Elhokar died — left uncleaned because his new masters call a king's death a thing to be regarded with reverence. He feels only the numbness of a man at the top of the last hill. Lady Leshwi drifts down through the broken ceiling to compliment his passion and remind him he has handed his pain to Odium, who will return it when needed. She summons him up to Hnanan — a Fused roughly equivalent to a highprince — who tells him her siblings will boast for years of having chosen him, then draws from her robes a strange knife: pale gold-white metal, sapphire set into the pommel. *You have killed a king. Would you do the same to a god?*

Outside the Thaylen wall, Navani runs out to meet Dalinar as he walks in on Kaladin's and Lopen's shoulders. He whispers that he understands now why the memories returned: he needed to learn to stand up again before facing Odium. He hands her an enormous ruby wrapped in his jacket and asks her to study it without breaking it. Navani has seen something like it before — much smaller, made by Gavilar. He has one more request: *I want you to teach me how to read.*

On the wall walk, Shallan, Veil, and Radiant sit too tired to celebrate. Jasnah checks on her ward, who renews her wardship oath through Radiant; Navani sends for a palanquin despite Veil's glare. Then Adolin skids to his knees beside her, ragged and dust-streaked, and looks past the others until he finds Shallan in her own eyes. *He knows.* When Kaladin lands on the battlements, Veil starts pulling forward again. Shallan shoves Veil and Radiant to the back of her mind — they were not her — and waves Kaladin past on her way after Adolin.

Venli stands at the railing of a ship fleeing toward Marat. The Fused in the captain's cabin blame their defeat on the few of them awakened, those unused to physical bodies. She attunes Appreciation — Timbre has granted her either rhythm at will, red eyes only when she draws in Stormlight, and the ability to hide all of it from Odium. Two parshman sailors talk in Thaylen about not knowing who they were. Venli walks to them and offers something both old and new: *I know who you were. Let me tell you of the listeners.*

Above the city, Szeth rises to where Nin hovers watching the retreating fleet. The Herald tells him that centuries on Braize stole his ability to feel and that only Ishar kept his mind intact. Szeth swears the Second Ideal of the Skybreakers — *I swear to follow the will of Dalinar Kholin* — chooses for his Ideal-quest the cleansing of the Shin of their false leaders if Dalinar agrees, and is granted the Surge of Division. Nin leaves him alone in the sky with a sword that confides it had never really liked Nin.

Shallan tracks Adolin down in an upper-city alley, fortified by Teshav's scribe-strong tea. He tries to step back, telling her he sees how she looks at Kaladin and will let him have her. She refuses to be handed off as a prize, then rounds on the absurd comparison — *can fly* against everything Adolin is — and pulls him into a kiss inside a cloud of passionspren. He worries he is becoming a nobody among gods and Heralds; she tells him that may be the best thing that ever happened to him. She admits Veil has terrible taste in men but has been brought into line; she has stopped leaking into new personas — three for now.

High on a rooftop, Kaladin turns a small stone in his fingers, watches Shallan and Adolin kiss far below, and finds something closer to agreement than bitterness. Syl confirms the truth: humans brought Odium with them when they came. *You were the Voidbringers.* He works out that the Recreance cannot have been a single day; it must have been ancient knights at last facing something they couldn't ignore. He decides Bridge Four's past makes them more pragmatic — they will not abandon their spren. On the next rooftop he sets a hand on Teft's shoulder over the still-storming longing for moss. *We lift the bridge together; we carry it.* Below, Rock sits apart on a temple step, Shardbow across his lap, head bowed over the oath he believes he broke to save Kaladin's life.

Dalinar stops in the Talenelat temple — cleared for the generals — wondering whether Taln ever fought humans in such a last stand. Taravangian brings his surgeons and confesses, brutally: he judged the city lost and stepped away so that he could be the one to lead the coalition. He became king of Jah Keved by design; a Herald who calls herself Dova in Kharbranth warned him a Desolation was coming; he had nothing to do with Gavilar's death, but once he heard what the assassin had done in that palace he sought him out, and years later gave him very specific instructions.

Moash steps out into the palace gardens, packed with humans evicted from their homes. His target is a madman near the back, giggling in the dark. He kneels, then rams the gold-white knife into the man's belly. The blade comes free trailing dark smoke; its pommel sapphire takes on a subdued glow. Above, the Fused dare not cheer. The murder is witnessed only by sleeping beggars: the final death of Jezrien — Yaezir, Jezerezeh'Elin, king of Heralds, the figure remembered as the greatest of all humans.

In a Low Ward triage tent, Lopen settles beside a one-armed Thaylen soldier and recruits him to Bridge Four — *we don't have a Thaylen yet*. Quoting the Ideals — *life before death, strength before weakness, journey before pancakes; I will protect those who cannot protect themselves* — a sudden cold strikes the tent, the gemstones flicker, and the ancient symbol of the Windrunners crystallises in frost across the floor. Lopen shouts at the sky — *now?* — receives a distant impression of *YOU WEREN'T QUITE READY*, and gives his god a double obscene gesture Rua copies with two extra arms.

Up the steps toward the Oathgate, Ash pulls Taln hand-in-hand into the foreign-refugee line. His last lucidity has faded; the man who once could never have hidden from a battlefield whimpered through this one. Then something rips inside her. *They killed him somehow.* Not like the Heralds' other deaths — there is no him at all anymore. Taln collapses like a puppet with cut strings. *My father is dead*, she tells a soldier. The Blackthorn's niece detaches herself from a knot of scribes with sketches of the two of them in Midius's drawing style in her hand. The ripping stops. For the first time in thousands of years, Ash falls unconscious.