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Four hours after Teft's funeral, Kaladin excuses himself from the gathering at Jor's winehouse and soars to the top of the tower to find Dalinar, the Blackthorn returned the previous night and now taking reports with Navani — the Stormfather's Bondsmith with the Sibling's Bondsmith both in the same room, a pairing Kaladin is still getting used to. Dalinar breaks off his meeting and starts to apologise for the dismissal that drove Kaladin into the storm. Kaladin cuts him off. He was right, sir. The Ideals do not fix anyone; people fix themselves, perhaps with help. He wants permission to step away from command — perhaps so far that he never returns — to work with men like Dabbid and the others. Granted, Dalinar says. Few have the wisdom to know when they need help and fewer still the strength to seek it.

Then Dalinar says something he has not made public: he and Odium have set a date for the contest of champions. Ten days. Kaladin and Syl react with a spike of alarm — a year of vague expectation collapses into a deadline. The contest will end hostilities one way or another and set a treaty; until then the war continues, and Odium is likely to grab what he can before borders are fixed. Kaladin assumes Dalinar wants him as a champion candidate and refuses. He is not right for it, son, Dalinar says quietly — a champion has to walk into that room as himself. But Dalinar does need help. Not as a soldier — as a surgeon. He intends to recover and try to heal the Herald Ishar, creator of the Oathpact, original binder of the Fused, and currently insane, so that Ishar can teach him what he must learn of his Bondsmith powers before the contest. Kaladin warns that ten days is not enough to treat ordinary battle shock, let alone a Herald's malady; Dalinar believes Ishar's affliction is supernatural and that the Herald has already left him clues. He asks only for Kaladin's agreement and a willingness to travel to Shinovar in odd company. As Dalinar turns away he hands Kaladin Wit's flute — Lift recovered it from a Breakaway salvage merchant who sells from the Shattered Plains, and Dabbid recognised it as his.

In a dark chamber in Kholinar, the Pursuer wakes screaming. It feels good to have lungs again, good to bellow his fury at the Windrunner who killed him a second time — and then he stops, because he is not in the storm. He is in a room. El stands at a window with his back turned, lit only by a Voidlight sphere, his carapace torn off and replaced with metal inclusions, no rhythms in his voice — El is forbidden them. The Pursuer asks why he has been reborn so soon. They did not want to wait, El says. The new god granted an exception and used the method the singers used before the Everstorm existed. Lezian, swallowing his pride, demands the sphere so that he may resume his hunt of the Windrunner who murdered him. El turns, smiles, and corrects him: it was El's convenience that could not wait, not Lezian's. He is curious whether a certain thing works, and Lezian is the only appropriate subject. The Voidlight on the knife in his hand looks wrong, warping the air around the gemstone. Have your last Passion, El tells him, and drives the blade in. The Pursuer's soul tears itself apart.

Kaladin walks the lit, ventilated, mountain-temperate Breakaway, marvelling at the awakened tower — stone doors that open at a touch, hidden water pipes, rooms they never knew existed because they were sealed when the tower fell silent. At the salvage bin Lift named, he finds Rock's razor, Sigzil's brushpens, and — clutched to his chest, in awe — the miniature wooden horse Tien carved and gave him the day they were recruited, lost when he was made a slave in Alethkar and somehow now in his hand on the Shattered Plains. He pays for the lot and heads back to the tavern: he promised Dabbid, Noril, and the others he rescued from the monastery sickrooms that he would join their meeting tonight. Ishar can wait one day. He promised Teft he would take care of himself.

Atop the tower at night, Dalinar stands holding Navani as Nomon rises. He admits he should have seen her potential earlier and is told it was conviction and brilliance, not luck, that solved Urithiru. The Stormfather rumbles, contemplative — Bondsmiths of the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher have sometimes coupled, he says, but the Sibling's Bondsmith was always apart. Navani offers to introduce Dalinar to the Sibling when they are ready, and warns it may take time. Dalinar tells her the deal is not everything they wanted, but it gives Roshar a chance at peace even if it costs Alethkar; she agrees, only the last clause worries her. He acknowledges it. This is his job — to sacrifice himself for everyone else, the one thing in which Taravangian was right. It still feels wrong that the king of Kharbranth is dead, burned away in another scheme to control Szeth, without Dalinar ever proving to him that his way was better. Something is off, he thinks. Some piece of the board has shifted. He confesses to Navani he is second-guessing the contract — he may have left Odium too much room to fight during these ten days — and that he will not pick Kaladin as champion. Kaladin is the army's finest soldier, but soldier is not what this contest needs. Wit thinks they have already won, but Wit got what he wanted; Odium will be trapped either way. Navani promises they will find the answers. When she is called back to her crown, Dalinar lingers, sits at the edge with his legs over the place Kaladin leapt into the storm. The Stormfather tells him it was wise to spare Kaladin in the fall; he understands mercy too, he says — he has shown it himself, on occasion. When? Dalinar asks.