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Kaladin stands back with Syl and watches Szeth take six Honorbearers apart with a grace that makes them look like children. A Stoneward raises a wall of stone and Szeth uses it as a promenade — running up along it until Nightblood consumes it in a burst of smoke. He lands in the middle of five enemies and blocks every blow with sparks, breaking chips from their Blades, throwing them back, sliding under one Stoneward's grab to touch her leg and send her careening into the air. *The Wind aids him,* Kaladin whispers. *No,* a voice answers in his head. *We fear him.* Kaladin glances around to find pinpricks of light flickering near him in air that should be empty — the spren of his armor, never speaking before, and far too many of them. Thousands. Watching from the other side. With them, the Wind herself, the ancient soul of Roshar, holding her breath at the edge of every horizon. Through the spren, he feels the land tremble to the east. Something terrible is happening at Urithiru.

Dalinar feels the moment Renarin and Rlain release Ba-Ado-Mishram — a long-lasting discordant note that had vibrated the soul of Roshar in the most terrible of ways at last extinguished. Something that had been broken for so very long is righted. Dalinar strides toward Odium with the power of Honor gathered around him. He sees honor — true honor — in the efforts of two young people to set right an ancient wrong, in a young spearman rising to his feet in the darkness, in the man who stood with friends to save a city not his own, in the Lightweaver who refused her lies and accepted truth, even in the queen who had been wrong and resolved to do better. He sees it in what Alethkar had been and what it has become. In himself. If the man who burned cities can be redeemed, then who cannot? That is honor. The power cannot see it, and that still troubles him, but he can. With Mishram's release the path is clear: her betrayal was the wound that had broken Tanavast, and now the power thirsts for a Vessel and Dalinar has seen its failings and its longing. Like every sapient thing, it wants to be understood. With that Connection, Honor is born again in Dalinar Kholin.

Szeth is free. Released from an eternal prison. He can dance again. He spins among the Honorbearers, Nightblood laughing as the black mist sprays around him. He is alive. Szeth son of Neturo is alive. Strange, then, that he weeps for what he must do — because it is time, past time, to bring these people peace. He slides on a Lashing across the ground and places himself directly in front of Pozen. *Thank you,* he says, *for your training,* and Nightblood takes his first teacher. He Lashes backward — moving in an unnatural way to anyone not used to Lashings — and drives the sword into a rock formation that had not been there a moment before, consuming Moss's Lightweaving and the man beneath. *Farewell, Moss,* he says, weeping. *The only one of you to be an actual friend.*

Mishram fills the small chamber with billowing black smoke. Rlain loses sight of Shallan outside, loses track of his surroundings, puts a hand to a wall — and the dark forms a sphere around him and Renarin from which she rises with knifelike claws and red-blazing eyes. Rlain attunes Resolve, seizes Renarin, and turns to her. *NO.* *He is one of them,* she growls. *He freed you. He did what was right, because it is right.* *He was a fool. They imprisoned me. They lied to me. He is evil.* *He is a person,* Rlain shouts. *He is human,* she shouts back. *Some are evil, some are good. Most are both. Just like us — and until we accept that, nothing will ever change.* *Nothing changed for me in two thousand years.* *It changed for us,* Rlain says, pulling Renarin closer, and attunes Love. *It changed for us, Mishram.* The Rhythm of Spite beats around them like thunder. She does not strike. She screams. An explosion of light follows, and the floor falls away. He clings to Renarin until they hit the stones of one of the Oathgate platforms of Urithiru, in Shadesmar — ejected from the Spiritual Realm and deposited near where they had begun.

A third Blade clangs at Szeth's feet — the Stoneward, this time. Three Honorbearers remain: his sister, the Dustbringer; the older Truthwatcher woman whose name he never learned; his father. The Truthwatcher steps forward and a globe of light forms in her hands. Shadows wake around him — the people Szeth has killed, transparent figures crowded in: the old Alethi king, a bandit from Bavland, a serving woman at the Veden feast, guards, darkeyes, Shardbearers. The whispers, made manifest. Each one points at him, accusatory. The black tendrils crawl up his wrist as Nightblood reaches for his soul — and his sister Elid emerges from among the dead to circle him. *You ruined everything, Szeth. Before you bashed out that soldier's brains, our life was perfect.* *I know,* he says, weeping. *I'm going to kill you for that.* *But Elid,* he whispers, *you don't deserve this — what Ishu has done to you. What I did to our family.* He sees, when she moves, that she trails a faint shadow, like the one he once trailed after being healed from near death. Except where his is white, hers is red. *I can't spare you. You aren't alive any longer, Elid. You're something else.* The whispers close in, but ignoring them does not make them go away — only steals their power. As she lunges he turns her Blade aside, brings them face to face, kisses her forehead, and sweeps Nightblood through her.