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Adolin grins inside his transparent faceplate, exulting as much in the shock of his own friends as in the enemy roar at Abidi's death. The armour tells him aluminum around the room — it knows. Voidspren flit out to check the corpse and slink back to their lines on either side. *Ten minutes,* Noura tells him in a small voice. Twelve Fused are still alive, Notum whispers, one already taking command. Adolin's grin dies as he reads his line: half exhausted, half wounded or untrained. They will fall in the first minutes and he will be dragged down through the eye-slits at the end. The Plate fills its own faceplate transparent and pipes air up through the joints to refresh him; convenient, and useless against the inevitable.

Maya's voice cuts in. *Adolin, I'm here. Maybe my friends can help.* He answers gently that a few more honorspren won't matter. She laughs. *You think I went to find honorspren?* The hallway fades and he sees, for a moment, through her eyes: the bead-floor of Shadesmar and figures dredging themselves out of the spheres like ancient corpses, fifty or so of them, eyes mere scratches. Cultivationspren like her. Peakspren. Honorspren. Ashspren. Plate spren riding their bearers' shoulders like barnacles. Adolin realises his old mistake — when he asked her to fetch the spren leaving Lasting Integrity, she had assumed he meant the deadeyes who had come to witness his trial, and would not abandon them. *They are those who have been forgotten,* she whispers. *Blades and Plate. Dropped into the sea, lost, buried in stone, discarded by time. But I haven't forgotten them. And they, like me, have not forgotten you.* One at a time the deadeyes raise their right fists in an ancient duelist's salute. *You need allies. We have come.* An ashspren points at his missing leg with the recognition that crosses realms; her mouth forces out *Wa… tch.* *Watchers at the rim,* he says. A promise, he tells her, is something deeper than an oath — an oath can be broken, but a promise stands as long as you are still trying, and cries with you when all goes to Damnation. *Once,* Maya says, *we stood against all that was dark. Adolin — we stand again.* He raises his arm to salute the fallen warriors who came to fight when others hid in fortresses, and in that moment he sees Honor alive and well.

Across the cavern, Renarin kneels by the cracked heliodor and squints toward Shallan's silhouette fighting in the dim. *This is our fault,* he whispers to Rlain beside him. *Humankind's. Peace was possible. We didn't want peace; we wanted to win.* They have to let Mishram go. Yes, Rlain agrees, hesitantly: *but it should be your call, Rlain. A singer's decision.* Rlain's rhythm shifts to Determination. She might destroy them the moment she gets out. But they have to set this right, and he wants the two of them to do it together — a human and a singer, side by side. *Let's do it,* Renarin says, and together they raise the gemstone high.

Szeth takes a long, calming breath inside his pillar of light. He feels whole — restored in body, clear in mind, decided in heart for the first time. His highspren tells him what he has done: he has spoken the Fifth Ideal of the Skybreakers and *become the law.* Szeth sees further than that. All men should be the law, he answers. All men should follow it because they have decided to, and fight it when it is wrong. Then, quietly, he tells the highspren it is the wrong spren for him — Nin's Skybreakers are as corrupted as Ishu's touch on this land. He will seek out the dissenters who keep the old ways and find another spren there, or build the order again himself. He releases the bond. The wrench is worse than the beating that left him bloody; flesh tears with it. He stays on his knees and chooses it anyway. The highspren fades, reaching for Nin's spren — which only shakes its head and lectures it on letting humans hold too much power. Then Szeth strides past his collapsed father and sister to Kaladin's pack, where Nightblood rests on a patch of unmoving Shin grass. *Sword-nimi, what happens to those you eat?* Investiture changes; they go where people go when they die. That will do, Szeth says — he has need of a sword one last time. Nightblood is delighted. *Pick me, please. I'm a great sword.* A hand seizes Szeth's shoulder. *Without Stormlight to feed it,* Ishar says, *that monstrosity will consume you in a heartbeat.* He pulls back his hand and a glowing cord runs from him to Szeth. *See our burden.* Szeth screams.

Back at Azimir, Yanagawn is the first to move when Adolin thrusts out his hands and a wide ring of Shardblades appears around him in white mist, each point-first into the floor with a Plate helm hanging from its pommel. The boy snatches a helm and looks comically small under it — until the rest forms in air around him and slams shut, glowing flame-orange at the joints with no order symbol on the breastplate. He pulls the Blade free and turns to face the line. The others scramble to follow. *Unoathed, arm up,* Adolin commands a second time. He sets Jaskkeem, Noura and Rahel inside the throne room with the Azish Shardblade and the vizier on the toppled throne, then turns to his nine — and finds, when he counts, that he has nine instead of eight. Never mind. He summons Maya as a Blade. *Life before death,* she replies. *Or life after death this time. I never really understood that motto. Let's kick some Fused ass.*

On the field of Shinovar, Kaladin pulls Ishar off Szeth — and finds the glowing cord running back to himself now too. Some Bondsmith trick. Emotion pulses down it. Kaladin sees darkness. Kaladin *is* darkness. It is worse than the worst days the shadow had ever taken him: like that night under the rain above a chasm, the cold one Wit had once found him in. Thoughts knife in. He is useless; worse than useless; he is a harbinger of death; from Teft to Tien he has buried everyone he ever tried to save; Dalinar sent him to Shinovar to get him out of the way. He drops to the stones, breath taut, rigid, not wanting to move — and the darkness crushes him not out of existence, which he would have welcomed, but into a ball of pain that will not end. *Feel it,* Ishar whispers, and touches Syl on the forehead; she gasps and drops, trembling. Nale approaches to argue for a new plan and is touched on the arm; he drops wheezing, told to bear his own madness now. With a wave Ishar sends the six Honorbearers down without touching them at all. *I stand at the crux of the Oathpact,* he says, *I can feel them all. Feel it. Then question me.*