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Gavilar Kholin stands in one of the Stormfather's visions, circling the nine Honorblades driven into stone at the site of Aharietiam — the supposed end of the Desolations — searching for the Words that would make him a Herald. He goes through the motions of piety, hefting Jezrien's Blade and then Chana's, performing reverence for his patron spren while privately wanting only the prize. He has guessed that the Words come from The Way of Kings and that becoming the Stormfather's champion will let him claim the dead Talenelat's seat in the Oathpact and so vault past mortal life. The Stormfather warns that immortality wears on minds — the Heralds are mad — but Gavilar dismisses the cost as a problem he will outrun.

Back in his palace study in Kholinar on the night of the Parshendi treaty feast, Gavilar is interrupted first by Dalinar — drunk and morose, asking why his brother is suddenly so interested in the parshmen and whether he means to conquer them. Gavilar cuts him down with one careful sentence about Evi — the wife Gavilar has secretly learned Dalinar killed at the Rift — and sends him stumbling back into the corridor. He has Tearim, his bodyguard wearing Gavilar's own Plate, steer Dalinar toward Navani's hidden wine stores, the better to keep the Blackthorn pliable. The Stormfather tells Gavilar his brother has potential he does not see; Gavilar dismisses Dalinar as a blunt instrument and admits, only to himself, that he is afraid of him.

A second visitor arrives without using the door: Thaidakar, the Lord of Scars, cloaked and hooded. He reminds Gavilar of a long-standing bargain — intelligence in exchange for the delivery of Restares — and accuses him of pocketing the prize. When Gavilar refuses to be commanded, Thaidakar lowers his hood: beneath it is no flesh-and-blood man but a figure of softly glowing white-blue light, a great spike driven through one eye and out the back of his skull. He warns that Gavilar is meddling with forces that rip mortals apart by their axi, says none of this is what Gavilar thinks it is, then dissolves into a floating glyph of light, delivers an ultimatum, and slips out beneath the door. The Stormfather tells Gavilar only that the visitor is dangerous — Radiant-like, but not.

Gavilar then meets privately with Restares and the stranger Restares brings in his wake: a tall, imperious Makabaki man with a birthmark on one cheek, addressed as Nale. The Sons of Honor founder begs Gavilar to abandon their plan to restore the Desolations — they cannot afford another Return. Pressed with Thaidakar's name, Restares confides a secret of his own: he knows where Ba-Ado-Mishram is hidden — the Unmade who tried to replace Odium and whose fall made the parshmen. Gavilar spills out a pouch of spheres to prove how far his work has come, including one of impossible inverted-violet light. The Makabaki stranger almost touches it, recoils, and demands to know how Gavilar obtained Voidlight — confirming with that one word that the man at Restares's back is Nale, Herald of Justice. Gavilar hints at an off-world scholar of his own, neither Ghostblood nor Son of Honor, who built him fabrial boxes that can move Light through Shadesmar and even, he claims, to and from Braize.

Navani interrupts at the door, having heard more than Gavilar would have liked. He sees her, weighs her cleverness against his hunger for divinity, and for the second time in one evening rejects her. He ushers the guests out and ushers her out after them with a husband's coldness, telling himself a god ought not to keep attachments.

Some time later Meridas Amaram arrives with a handful of new Sons of Honor recruits, among them a robed old man Gavilar finally places as Taravangian, the inconsequential king of Kharbranth. Gavilar gives his usual speech about ancient oaths and the return of the Knights Radiant, confides to Amaram that his weapon is ready, and lets Amaram press his suit for Gavilar's daughter. Then he notices Taravangian standing alone at the map of Roshar, and the old man — speaking with a familiarity Gavilar is not used to — recounts his mother's deathbed vision: standing above the world, hearing of the Desolation, the Everstorm, the Night of Sorrows. They are the same words Gavilar has been hearing from the Stormfather. For the first time in his career he feels the brush of his own inadequacy, and resolves to bring Dalinar back to the sword. Eshonai arrives outside to receive her treaty invitation; he handles her smoothly and adjourns to his chambers.

Alone with the Stormfather, Gavilar lays out his plan in the open. If becoming a Herald means torture in Damnation between Returns, he will simply yield each time and come straight back, rule forever, and use endless war on the returned Voidbringers to season his soldiers for the eventual reconquest of the Tranquiline Halls. The Stormfather recognises, far too late, what he has been cultivating. As Gavilar hurls a wineglass and demands the Words, the Stormfather doubles over in agony: somewhere in the world a Herald has just died. To Gavilar's direct question — was Restares actually a Herald? — the Stormfather answers yes, and Gavilar realises with cold horror that the spren has been able to lie. The Stormfather names himself the biggest fool of them all and departs.

Sadeas crashes through the door: an assassin in white is loose in the palace, killing dozens of guards as he comes. Tearim starts unlocking the Plate from his body to give back; Sadeas declares it too slow, demands Gavilar's robe, and offers to wear it as a decoy himself — he worked too hard to put Gavilar on the throne to let him fall now.

Gavilar falls. Landing in the wreckage of his own balcony with no pain in his body — the worst sign — he assumes Thaidakar has sent the killer and is stunned when the assassin says he has never heard the name and that his masters are the Parshendi. The Blade summoned at his neck is Jezrien's Honorblade. The Stormfather confesses he did not cause this and says, if he tries again, he will choose differently. Dying, Gavilar finally accepts that what is needed is not his son Elhokar but Dalinar — the man he has spent years suppressing. He presses the black sphere of Voidlight into the Stormfather's shimmer with a last, fumbled request that his brother be told to find the most important words a man can say. The Stormfather takes the sphere and refuses the rest: he made the mistake of trusting Gavilar's family once and will not make it again. Gavilar dies as he has lived — alone, and surprised by it.