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Kaladin sits in the wagon's front seat between Szeth and Syl as Szeth drives the last miles east. Nin talks at last from the bed about Ishar: how he Connected himself to Shinovar three or four centuries ago, became its spren, and slid from grandeur into the conviction that he was the Almighty. Kaladin presses Nin for a plan that could end Ishar's touch on the land; the answer is the same as it was for Nin — do for Ishar what they did for him, but harder. Dalinar's hope of a spoken oath momentarily restoring him is the candidate, Syl confirming each oath is a mini perpendicularity, a confluence of Intent. The catch is structural: Szeth's Fourth Ideal as a Skybreaker requires the quest finished, and the quest *is* defeating Ishar.

Kaladin asks what the Wind actually is. Syl says she is much older — older than Honor, Cultivation, and Odium arriving on Roshar — and that if a god still lives here, Syl finds him in the quiet breeze that dances with all things. *The time approaches,* the Wind whispers to him. *Everything. I'm sorry…* The wagon turns where Nin directs, onto a ridge near a mound that was once a thunderclast's corpse, real grass nodding from cracks in the stone. *Aharietiam,* Syl realises. Nin confirms it: here Honor abandoned his Heralds, here they laid down their Blades and walked away. Szeth leaves Nightblood in the wagon to guard the Honorblades, and the four — joined by Szeth's own spren and the Wind — walk into the cathedral-stone clearing to meet Ishi'Elin, Herald of Oaths.

Adolin and his team climb out of the smuggler's tunnel onto the bronze grounds of the palace — quartz-flecked stone like a sky of stars — while Drehy and Skar's feint pulls a Heavenly Ones formation away from the city centre. Jaskkeem leads them to the rear door, Noura has the key, and they are inside. The halls are silent. *I feel like I'm actually doing something,* Yanagawn whispers, *for the first time.* But the silence reads wrong to Adolin: no looting, no posted guards. *This is a trap.* He reasons out three approaches the enemy could close on. Notum confirms it: fifty troops and Fused inbound from behind, and at the T intersection two larger formations wait left and right — hundreds. The hidden door Noura tries between the urns is jammed. The whole throne room is lined in aluminum, Yanagawn reminds them — built to defeat the Deepest Ones, but a death trap for any Radiant who steps in without already-summoned Blade in hand.

Adolin opens one of the throne room doors and sees the answer to the silence: Abidi the Monarch sitting on the Azish throne in Adolin's own Plate, red eyes burning through the slits, the imperial heirloom Blade stabbed in a table at his hand. He pulls it free and points it at Adolin. *Wait out here,* Adolin tells the others. *Whatever else happens, hold the room.* He steps inside. The seven bolts slide home behind him. Abidi laughs and reminds him the aluminum lining suppresses summoning — *the Azish didn't realize the death trap they were creating* — and that he stays sane by bathing in Radiant blood. He charges.

Elsewhere in the Spiritual Realm, beneath Formless's eyeless gaze, Shallan is hit with death after death — mentors falling in cycles meant to break her. But Pattern presses her on the distortion: the lie was never that she had killed mentors, only that she *was* what killed mentors. She stands up. The visions don't hurt. She has reconciled with Veil, and what is the rest of this compared to that? *We have found,* Radiant says quietly in her, *a life we love.* She names the truth of her personas — they were how she coped, how she protected herself — and the visions fade. Pattern returns; Rlain and Renarin meet her in the black expanse with Glys and Tumi hiding inside them. They piece together what Mishram has been telling them through the visions: betrayed, abandoned, trapped with her own thoughts so long she has begun to believe she *deserves* it. A corridor opens. They walk through into a small stone childhood-room — Melishi dead in the corner, holding a child's blocks; a cracked yellow heliodor at the centre, ringed by candles still burning. Mishram's prison. A shadow falls in the corridor behind them. Mraize. *I leave Mishram to you, gentlemen,* Shallan says, walking out.

Back in Urithiru, Dalinar steps into the top-room of the tower and Navani watches him — needing to see at once which Dalinar returned. The Sibling had warned her he was coming. He is neither Blackthorn nor Bondsmith now. He takes her in his arms and kisses her, and the guards and scribes — Sebarial and Palona holding hands under a Herdazian wedding ribbon, Jasnah still apart, soundly feeling her failure at Thaylen City — wait. *I'm sorry for leaving you,* she whispers. *Gemheart, you cannot leave me; I carry you inside.* He asks after Gav; she says he is safe and sleeping. She tells him she was wrong to think she could help from here; he tells her she did the right thing, and there were things he needed to see. She brushes the stubble on his face — a day, maybe two of growth, where over a week has passed in Urithiru — and asks if he is still frightening. *No. Your fire is the fire that spreads, that envelops my heart.*

They share a moment that the room dares not break. He confesses he does not know how to beat Odium; the trip was not a waste, but it showed him how little he understands. *Do what is right in the moment,* she tells him. *I trust you fully — because you can hold that fire and not be burned. Discard all the rest. The thoughts, philosophies, arguments. Don't do what the gods would have you do. Do what you, Dalinar Kholin, would do.* He nods. He thanks the room. He puts a hand on Sebarial's shoulder; Sebarial — teary — grips his wrist back, marvelling that they have all *accidentally become good men.* Dalinar tells him Gavilar was a liar. *Strange, you finally know.* And then: *I can't just protect Alethkar; I have to find a way to defeat him fully. With oaths and light.* Navani has set Nohadon's book on the table. He slips it off, carries it in one hand, and starts up the stairs.