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Inside the Azimir dome on the fourth day, Adolin crushes a Regal with the Azish Shardhammer — a weapon made as if for a god, less refined than Maya's Blade — and holds the centre of the pike line with Neziham of Azir through an eleventh wave. The singer strategy is wear-down by superior numbers; today they concentrate the entire flood at one section. He kicks a table into them, signals advance, and runs them back toward the new fort they have raised around their portal: a hundred-foot dome of disassembled ship-planks. Azish hurlers toss bags of oil; flaming arrows catch the wood — and the burn sputters out. Half the fort is no longer wood. The enemy's stolen Soulcaster has reset it to dark unpolished bronze, sealed (the answer no one wants to say aloud) with feces. Then panels in the bronze slide open and stormforms hurl lightning into the advancing line; archers tandem-fire; reservist singers rush out to reset the position. Adolin roars in his Plate, smashes a path clear, calls the retreat, blocks arrows from the rear with Neziham, and pulls his troops back to Kushkam.

They confer aside, helms off. *Bronze*, Adolin says. Kushkam blames himself for losing the Soulcaster; Neziham points out that even waxed wood may not have caught. They cannot expend the lives to take that fort. Adolin asks about Alethi-scale heavy crossbows, then catapults — Azimir has had no siege equipment in centuries. He suggests trying to drop rocks on it through the skylights to test the inner structure; Kushkam walks off shouting orders.

Outside, Adolin sags as his armorers haul his Plate off, exhaustionspren buzzing; Colot catches him before he stumbles. He sends Kaminah to ask Urithiru for clarification on what *capturing* the city means in the contract, and orders his second armor standby Reep into the Plate for the next shift (the first, Moore, is sleeping the last attack off). For an instant he thinks the Plate is reluctant to leave him; he tells it quietly to serve those who bear it as it served him, to protect them, and is amused at himself — he talks to his sword, why not the armor, and Gallant enjoys conversation. Casualties: twenty-one human dead, three times as many wounded. He asks for the names. Then Colot and Kaminah tag-team him to bed — under threat of Grubs the sergeant at arms and his officer-tying rope — and Adolin surrenders, secretly grateful, dragging Colot to bed after his next shift in return.

At the Shattered Plains, Sigzil finally steps out of the Oathgate on Narak Two with a plan and takes formal command of the united defence of Narak. He hovers above the central plateaus — half-moon Narak Prime with its open side west; perfectly circular Narak Two holding the Oathgate; Three and Four around them — and confirms what he feared: troops are concentrated only on the two central plateaus. Vienta, the woman shrouded in moving cloth he loves for her mathematical mind, agrees the better defence is the one he has been turning over. The Everstorm has been moved across the continent overnight at speed and then slowed; the battle will happen in darkness. He flies west with his Windrunner command staff — head scribe Ka, stout quartermaster Leyten as his second, and Peet — close enough to count Fused inside the storm. Vienta tallies hundreds of Heavenly Ones and Skybreakers flying Fused in with the storm — eight or nine hundred, against an enemy whose two thousand functional Fused make this *almost half their entire force here.*

In the Narak Prime map room he briefs his dozen generals and scribes: stretch the defence across all four walled plateaus, knowing they don't have the troops to do it properly — *and that's the point.* Engineering builds failure points into bridges so the break comes where it won't kill anyone; the coalition cannot afford to lose Prime (it would lose the entire region, warcamps, Unclaimed Hills and all, and starve Urithiru) or Two (the Oathgate is lifeline and retreat). So they will protect all four, deliberately under-protect Four, and lure the enemy to spend their assault there. The siege only has to hold six days. Winn, the silver-haired senior general, immediately catches the shape — controlled-retreat fallback thinking with a dash of engineering — and gives Balivar cover to commit. Vienta rattles off ration math; the scribes look at Sigzil (taking credit she would rather not have) with new respect.

Troops file into Three and Four. He appoints Balivar head of ground defences and keeps air dominance for himself. His three hundred Radiants — mostly Windrunners and Edgedancers, a growing handful of Stonewards, some Truthwatchers and Lightweavers, no Elsecallers beyond Jasnah, no Willshapers (the Reachers refuse human bonds) — face nine, against an enemy with Skybreakers and Taravangian's Dustbringers now decamped to Jah Keved. Not a fair fight; the engineered failure point is meant to fix it. *I worried I wasn't ready*, he tells Vienta on the wind. *I worried too*, she answers; *but they like how logically we approached this.* *Live this truth*, he says, raising his fists. She salutes back with the Bridge Four salute, and Sigzil is done questioning. Now he will lead.