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Szeth and Kaladin land with a Lashing on the ridge holding Talmut's monastery — bare rock for soldiers (those who *subtract*), a long fortified encampment that should hold thousands of trainees, today utterly abandoned. The buildings are in better repair than Szeth's homestead but the paths are empty. Szeth explains the Shin cosmology to Kaladin and Syl: stone upholds the soil, creation is the greatest good, breaking it the greatest shame, and soldiers — who must defile stone to do their work — are reviled for it. Syl cheerfully reminds him that her kind *barf out* rocks. Kaladin pushes back that the Shin shove their unpleasantness onto a tormented few; Szeth retorts that the Radiants are the same — watchers at the rim who must bathe in blood so others may live in peace.

Szeth feints walking past one of the barracks, then doubles back and kicks the door open. Dozens of Shin cower in the dim. They walk on stone — a blasphemy — because, they whisper, *the soil will swallow us*. They work the fields at night, *when the ground cannot see us*, on the shaman's order. The soldiers, they say, went north *hearing a voice we could not*. Syl notes the cult-like behaviour reminds her of the Unmade she met in Kholinar and at Urithiru. Kaladin argues the people did not choose this and do not deserve Szeth's cleansing; Szeth wavers, then sets the doubt aside. He has guides: Nin and Dalinar would *find answers, then do what needed to be done — according to the law*. The monastery may yield those answers.

The fortress's gates stand open — itself a blatant violation of Sacred Truth. Inside the great hall, only one figure waits beneath the mural of Talmut in chains: Rit-daughter-Clutio, a shaman who nine years ago had a hand in condemning Szeth Truthless. She greets him as *pilgrim*, says she was told he would come sooner — months of waiting — and summons Talmut's Honorblade for herself. *Talmut broke*, she tells him. *He brought the Desolation. His Blade is better held by the worthy.* She tells Szeth to *prove himself*, that he must cleanse the sin of having lost Yesoran's Blade (stolen by Moash) before he is granted his *glorious opportunity*. He turns and hands Nightblood to Kaladin — *do not draw it; do not intervene* — and the duel begins.

Outside Szeth's story, the chapter cuts to Adolin watching the first wave hit at Azimir. Azish crossbowmen open fire on the control building; stormforms inside answer with red lightning, lighting the chamber like an infused sphere. Direforms — seven feet tall, faster and stronger than the Azish spearmen and now charging at blinded targets — punch the line, which buckles immediately. The control building begins flashing fast, each pulse depositing another singer platoon. Adolin orders his march-in, warns May to prepare for Heavenly Ones, drops thirty feet off the balcony in Plate and charges across the platform.

At the puncture point he hits the enemy like *a rushing river of steel and Blade*, downs a half-dozen direforms, and an Azish junior officer expertly folds the line to admit him. He clashes with a direform bearing a Veden half-shard and an oversized axe, ducks under the swing, and skewers her. Stormform lightning splashes off the Plate; it absorbs and dissipates the discharge, vibrating against his skin. He keeps moving — a distraction, drawing fire — while his own troops form up and the Azish follow their lead, falling back to a wider thirty-yards-out pike-wall with May's archers on the balcony.

Maya flags three Heavenly Ones rising over the control room. Adolin withdraws; arrows from May's team harass the Fused into peeling off to hit the archers first. As he holds alone the support squad arrives — Colot with the type-three Shardbearer guard — and fans out. Adolin shifts through Windstance into Stonestance into Vinestance, using fist as well as Blade. The enemy starts to break; then three flaming, oil-doused fireballs arc through the air overhead — May's archers have torched the three Heavenly Ones under Adolin's *Heavenly One protocols*. The disoriented Fused retreat to the control building. *To your left*, Maya warns; Adolin strikes by instinct and his Blade extends to spear another flying Heavenly One through the gemheart. A diversion — and a fresh Fused breaks from the formation, a duelist with paired aluminum-lined maces and a face mostly white in a glyph-like pattern. Adolin recognises the Heavenly One he and Shallan fought in Shadesmar — Abidi the Monarch — come for revenge.