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Adolin moves between the subcamps at Azimir on day three of the siege, telling the story of the dance where his trousers ended up backward, asking after families and quartermaster grievances, calling every man he can by name. He has decided that being bad with names is a failure of effort, the same as bad swordsmanship — and that learning a man's name carries the price of remembering his face among the fallen. He counts the price worth paying, because if you are going to die for someone you should at least do it for someone who knew you. His father would tell men to fight for kingdom and ideal; Adolin has worked out that in the storm of battle nobody ever does — they fight for one another.

Five days remain, and the empty seats are everywhere. He needs bodies to clog corridors. He pairs with Colot on the recruitment plaza in front of the dome, and runs the kind of mass intake an Azish military's tidy entrance-exam culture cannot do. He pulls nine in ten out — those too small, too old, too thin — and reassigns most to surgeons' tents, messengers, runners. He stops at one tall, strongly-built woman in line, a master blacksmith named Sarqqin who, his scribe Challa whispers, has *filled out the forms to live as a man*. He notes the *Sarkuin* sound he cannot quite make and slots him into a platoon he knows is short a smith.

A lanky Azish kid he has pulled out as a messenger glares him down at the end of the line and demands to know why she is being assigned a messenger run. *I can fight. I might look lanky for a boy* — *for a boy?* Adolin peers at her again, recalls a story his mother read him about a girl who served in her brother's place, learns she calls herself after one *Aqqil* from a famous Azish retelling. *Zabra*, she tells him. He tests her with two shields, sends her sprawling twice, then has Challa fetch an untrained male recruit who manages it as easily. He squats by her where she lies. *I remember when my father refused to let me join him in battle. If I put you in, people will die — your friends.* He offers her a knife. If the front line breaks and the reserves fall, *all that's left will be you.* He sends her to May Aladar as a messenger, with permission to learn combat archery if she serves well. Bells sound — the enemy is making an assault — and he runs for his armorers. Colot hands him a fresh knife on the way: *they take it better from you.*

East of the Plains, the chasmfiends start to sing. Four-voice harmonies, deep enough that Venli feels them in her gemheart — tones of a planet, separate from the rhythms of singers. She crouches and watches sand dance on stone in geometric patterns. *We enhance. You can enhance further.* She places her hands on the rock, breathes Stormlight, and lets the tones shape it — a tiny mountain range. To Timbre it is unmistakably the Shattered Plains seen from above; Venli cannot quite see ridges where she remembers chasms. Then the storm hits and the chasmfiends form a ring with the young inside, their bodies a wall against Everstorm and highstorm both. She huddles by a smaller beast that nuzzles her shoulder. The lightning rolls overhead; Stormstriders pass and the chasmfiends trump them off as if defending the camp.

She lays her hands on the stones again. *Show me.* *Come to the centre. The centre of the Plains. Your former home. But beware. A battle happens there now.* Narak. She pours more Stormlight in and the stones liquefy in front of a small crowd of her people: a pre-Radiant human nation with skin a faint blue tint built a great walled city on the Plains to host a tenth Oathgate, in the era of Urithiru's building and Nohadon's rise. They worked the stones with Surges they had not yet bound into Radiant orders. *Because of the new gods*, the stones say, mourning, *they didn't understand* — and the alien rock at the city's heart did not understand them. *The fourth moon. Now dead, now fallen. Stone that is not quite stone. And when gods came here* — the stone went haywire, people sank into it, the landscape broke in Honor's own hand. When the ground settled, the Shattered Plains as Venli knows them — a corpse with haunting symmetry. The same moment showed her nine figures in a ring with swords: Aharietiam, the Heralds' departure.

*Come and see.* The alien stone is still there. Venli tells Thude, Bila, Jaxlim, and the budding Willshapers gathered around her: they leave for Narak today if they can, through the chasms, into a war.