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With the highstorm roaring on the other side of the glass, Kaladin steps off the Pursuer's decaying husk and walks forward through a watching arena. The creature scans the crowd and hears his own lore unraveling — he lives by reputation, he always kills whoever kills him, he wins each conflict eventually. Kaladin tells him to flee — promises that he will be chased forever, that Kaladin himself is the storm. Syl presses close and whispers that something is wrong; the others should have come out by now. Then Kaladin meets the Pursuer in the centre of the atrium, on the swirling pattern of Urithiru's strata. As the creature seizes him, Kaladin presses Navani's device to his chest and Lashes the bar downward. It carries the Pursuer backwards into the great window; his carapace cracks against the glass, and without Voidlight to heal he bleeds orange. He tears himself free of the device, leaving it stuck to the bloodied window, and Kaladin tells him quietly to flee. Three times. The creature breaks and shoves past his own soldiers and is gone. The watching humans burst into gloryspren and a chant: *Stormblessed. Stormblessed. Stormblessed.* Trembling, Kaladin retrieves the gauntlet and turns toward the infirmary door, which has somehow already opened — the Radiants still lying in their lines, still under their sheets. Something hits the stone in front of him. Teft's body has been dropped from above. Burned-out eyes. The bearded face that had cursed him and smiled at him in equal measure, and had always been there when everything went dark. Teft is dead.

Moash lands a short distance away. He raises a hand to keep the watching soldiers off — *leave him be, this is how we win* — and Heavenly Ones hover down around him. Moash knows exactly what Kaladin is feeling: the certainty that nothing can ever be the same. Kaladin cradles Teft's corpse and lets out a low animal sound, going as insensate as he had after King Elhokar's death, as after Roshone. *That,* Moash tells the Fused, *is how you break a storm.* He orders no one to touch Kaladin and walks into the infirmary.

Inside, Moash kneels at the rear before the cross-sectioned stone model of the tower and picks out the miniature crystal globe — the final node, dressed as an ornament where any eye would see it but think nothing. Raboniel had known days ago and stalled, and that is trouble; he summons his Blade and destroys the tiny fabrial with its tip. Then he goes to the curtained-off section at the rear. Lift lies bound and unconscious there with Kaladin's parents and brother. Odium has forbidden Moash from killing the Edgedancer — he hopes he did not strike her head too hard. He grabs Lirin by his bound hands and drags the screaming, gagged surgeon out into the atrium. There he waits until the Pursuer comes flying back as a *shameful ribbon of light*, lands in a new body, and accepts Kaladin's father from him. Moash whispers his orders: this is Stormblessed's father, do not say so loudly, do not draw Kaladin's attention — if Kaladin regains his senses, immediately kill the man in front of him. The Pursuer protests that he could kill Stormblessed now and is told flatly that he will not; Moash speaks for Command. Two paths are open to Kaladin — either to take the route Moash himself took and give up his pain, or to raise the only hand that can ever kill him: his own. The atrium falls silent. Kaladin kneels before the storm clinging to a dead man, shaking. Moash searches inside himself and feels nothing — good — and tells the gathered Fused not to ruin this. He has a queen to kill.

In the basement, Navani is waiting. She has tried to speak with the Sibling and heard only whimpers. The chance comes when her door guard cries out and runs off — outside, the field around the crystal pillar has vanished and the Sibling is exposed. Raboniel sends the guard to summon the Word of Deeds and the Night Known and steps alone into the pillar chamber. Navani needs a magnet. She fetches one she had seen earlier in the wreckage, slips into the corridor past her crates, and arms a single device with a click — a painrial sized to fill anyone who crosses that point in the hall with immense agony. Then she walks into the dim chamber with her anti-Voidlight dagger in a white-knuckled grip. Raboniel has her hand pressed to the pillar to finish corrupting the Sibling. Without turning she tells Navani she should run — there is a copy of their notebook and her anti-Voidlight plate on the desk outside — because she has deliberately sent the guard away so Vyre cannot claim her on a defaulted covenant. Navani refuses to leave the Sibling. They argue: scholars such as they cannot be reduced to brutes with knives. *We are all children of Odium in the end,* Raboniel says, *children of our Passions.* Navani answers that others may be ruled by passion; they are scholars, something better — and turns the dagger hilt-out. She offers a compromise: take this, come back to her room with her, and they can wait together; if Vyre defeats Stormblessed she will submit; if not, Raboniel will leave the Sibling. The Fused takes the dagger with a quick, untrusting snap. They walk back up the hallway together — and Raboniel steps directly into Navani's fabrial trap.