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Navani paces a room in Urithiru with Wit long past sundown, the dawn of Day Ten approaching. Dalinar is still in the Spiritual Realm and Wit is telling her they should *do nothing.* If Odium was interfering with her visions, he was almost certainly interfering with Dalinar's too — he was the reason their Connection was severed. Wit's contact on Yolen agrees: that severance counts as interference with Dalinar's reaching the contest on time. If Dalinar does not arrive, the contract calls it a forfeit. So either Odium guarantees his return or whatever he is doing inside the visions is worth more to him than Alethkar. That second possibility terrifies her.

They are alone in the room. No other monarchs to consult. Fen has signed away Thaylenah; the Emuli and most of the Azish empire have done the same. Yanagawn is in Azimir with Adolin on a city that is falling. Jasnah has gone quiet in Thaylenah and her terseness about coming home suggests she is taking the loss poorly. Navani is exhausted enough to wonder if she has slept at all in the Spiritual Realm. *I think Odium will be sure Dalinar returns,* Wit says quietly. *Considering who he once was.* Navani asks for the rest of the sentence and Wit gives it to her: Odium's new Vessel is Taravangian.

*Taravangian is dead,* she says, sleep fleeing. *We found his body.* *A body,* Wit replies, *nearly consumed by Nightblood. A husk that could have been anyone. Almost certainly all that remained of my old friend Rayse.* Wit explains what this means: Rayse was savage, predictable, pride-driven and self-preserving — exploitable. Taravangian is *catastrophe.* He cares for Dalinar, and that makes him dangerous; he will want not merely to defeat him but to break him. The contest is being run for Dalinar's oath of service. She should worry less about whether her husband comes home than about *which version of him* does. They cannot help. They are out of their depth. *We wait. You should pray. I will wish. Whatever happens tomorrow, secretly, Dalinar Kholin is both champions.*

In the breach at the Azimir dome, Adolin remembers the Battle of the Tower as he rams his spear into a darkness lit by faded stars and red embers. Pikes thin behind him as their bearers are pulled into the shield wall. He works through four numbnesses: ear, refusing to hear the screams of dying friends beside him; mind, falling into pure muscle memory; body, his arms too heavy to be his; soul, the last to go. When the chill comes and he looks for replacements behind him, there are no more to be had. Every soldier the empire still has standing is plugging this hole or others. No more rotations until he falls.

The last moon is setting. Across the dome — hundreds of yards away through the gap they hold — he sees a brilliant figure silhouetted against it: a human Shardbearer in his own Plate defending the other catwalk alone. In his numbness he half-imagines it is him fighting gloriously. Then the Shardbearer falls, swarmed under, and the Azish cheering becomes a chant — *the last human falls; the Shards are ours.* The shield line buckles further. He shouts *hold* and nobody listens.

Then the singer ranks part and Abidi the Monarch steps to the front in glistening Plate — his Plate — and an imperial Azish heirloom Blade in hand. The shield line shatters. The general inside Adolin notes that the men held longer than a game of towers would predict. A faceless soldier shoves past him; he trips on his peg; the floodgates open. He curls up among the dead, considers staying down — and finds himself instead furiously, coldly angry. Nothing in any of this had a point. He had supported his father against the world's betrayal and then learned the man had murdered his mother. He stood trial for all humankind at Lasting Integrity and got nothing. He had become the villain in his family's story for killing the man who had tried to kill him.

He yanks the release cord on his back, pulls free the longsword Shallan gave him for their wedding, throws the scabbard away, braces his peg backward between two cobbles, and becomes the stone. *Why?* Maya presses — *I AM COMING* — and he refuses to summon her: he does not want her to see him fall. He fights like a man who knows he is dying, swinging at the chinks in carapace because singers expect their armour to do the work. He takes down eight, then a spear through the back of his good leg, then an axe to the side. Another sweep at the peg and he is down again, wedding sword knocked from his fingers into the night. The first time in his life the sword has not brought him peace.

A singer raises a halberd over him — and an arrow takes her in the eye. A volley follows, driving the enemy back. Colot reaches him; May's archers are arrayed beside Yanagawn, who is *holding a lantern,* because the storming emperor refuses to leave until Adolin is with them. *Leave me,* he croaks. *Storm that,* Colot says. *Get up or let that boy die.* He needs to see his father again. He gets up. Hmask takes his other arm.

They cross the chaos to the building complex beside the hospital. Singer officers give chase; the saferoom defenders fake an escape through the back doors while Adolin, the emperor, and a handful of others slip into the chamber underneath. Rahel the teenage Truthwatcher kneels over him and pours Regrowth through his wounds — enough to keep him alive, not enough to lift the fatigue or the deeper numbness. Kushkam is there, half-healed, the wound across his face hardly scabbed.

Adolin looks across the room at Kushkam and they share a look that says everything. The singers are not torching the city; they intend to rule it, and many of them once lived here as parshmen. It is their home. Azimir has fallen. The empire of Azir is, for now, no more.

*THE END OF Day Nine.*