(title hidden — not yet read)

(summary hidden — not yet read)

Sigzil sits hunched on a surgical table in Urithiru, a hole inside him where his bond used to be. The officer on watch had sent him to a surgeon despite his insistence there is nothing to be done; Lirin examines him anyway and starts naming his son's strategies for grief. The door slams open. Wit is wide-eyed and sweating. *Dalinar is dead. The Sibling is going into another self-protective coma. The world is ending. So if you please, Lirin, shut up.* He shoves the surgeon out and takes Sigzil by both arms.

He needs help. The power Odium now holds is about to identify Wit as the only thing on the planet that can harm it and vaporize him. He is carrying something more ancient than the gods, the enemy cannot get it, and he needs it borne by someone who is *not* a Radiant. Dalinar, he says bitterly, gambled and unleashed a terror on the cosmere. They cannot let the new god have the Dawnshard. *And so you brought it here to his planet?* Sigzil asks. *Idiot.* *Guilty.* Sigzil agrees, glad of a way to make up for Vienta. The ancient power slides into him with a single overwhelming directive — *Exist* — wonderful and terrible, fitting inside a human heart. Wit sticks a small device of gears and an hourglass of light to him and shoves him over backward. *Have I told you about the time I—* the god vaporizes Wit in a wave of red mist, and the last thing Sigzil sees is the floor of a Shadesmar surgery surrounded by terrified spren.

Renarin stands in green-blue light on an upper floor of the tower. The room has filled with crystal; his aunt floats inside it, glowing, frozen, asleep. The Sibling has raised a dome of the same crystal over all of Urithiru. The tower still functions — lights, lifts, Towerlight for the Radiants inside — but the Oathgates are dark and the city is sealed off. He had left Shallan behind by accident, and no longer knows how to explain that to Adolin. Jasnah kneels with her hand to the wall, hair undone, exhausted. Rlain's hand on his shoulder steadies him. They go down to Sebarial and Aladar, who look to him now that his father is dead and his aunt indisposed. On the stairwell he tells them, quietly, that he will not be their king — that Adolin will not either — and asks Jasnah to help him institute the elected senate and Ministerial Exemplar she has long written about. When his aunt wakes, he says, she will accept that a queen can lead without ruling.

On the roof he braces himself and kneels by his father's body. Dalinar lies face up on blood-soaked blankets, killed by windblown stones across his back. Gavinor sits by the railing with Oathbringer across his lap and red eyes. Renarin gives his father a quiet last hug — the kind Dalinar had always needed, despite what everyone else thought — and thanks him for being proud of him. He reads a short eulogy from his own notes: *no hero dies alone, for he carries with him the dreams of everyone who continues to live.* Rlain hums to the Lost. Aladar looks down: Dalinar came up here to save humankind and failed. Teshav adds that the Everstorm is spreading to cover everything but the tower. Renarin knows both verdicts will be the ones repeated. But Glys whispers a third: *He found a way forward. The only way forward. I think we will understand it, eventually.* They arrange for the body to be Soulcast to stone and set among the ancient kings.

Szeth wakes far from there, in a land covered by dark as the hateful hour, lit only by crackling red lightning. The Everstorm is no longer moving. His right arm is gone above the shoulder. Kaladin lies dead beside him, no breath, no pulse, eyes burned to pits — the Honorblades and Heralds gone. Sylphrena does not answer. He crawls until he finds Nightblood in the grass; the sword cries in a small, frail voice, certain it killed Kaladin. *No,* Szeth tells it. *His eyes were burned. A Shardblade did it. You took a few of his fingers, but you stopped.* The sword had taken its price freeing his family. In Kaladin's pack he finds a small woolen sheep and a carved wooden horse, and at last finds tears. Then he puts the black sword to his one remaining shoulder and starts walking. He will find help to bury his friend, then he will seek the more populated parts of Shinovar and do his best to help a nation that is about to wake confused and afraid — the last bearer of Truth of Shinovar, told to live better, and meaning to.

Jasnah trails alone through her rooms. Her uncle's death looms enormous. She had prided herself on being the first Radiant of this generation; she helped neither Bondsmith in the end, failed Thaylen City, gave up the Shattered Plains for a treaty the loss of the Oathgates has made hollow, and surrendered the Alethi homeland. Only her opposition to Vorinism feels stable. Her moral philosophy, she now sees, is full of holes — her position of authority convinced her she could decide the greatest good for others, and it never had been the answer. She climbs into bed through exhaustionspren and finds a note in Wit's handwriting accepting her letter ending things, saying goodbye for what may be a very long time. She laughs. What else can she do? Her father long dead, her mother in a coma, her brother slain, her uncle failed and gone, and even Wit now gone. Worst of all, Taravangian — about her, about everything — had been right. She has not felt so alone since she was locked away as a child.

On a Narak plateau under the black sky, Venli sits and watches a sunset she cannot see. A day has passed since the Ascension. Retribution has sent a messenger: the listeners may use his Light to fuel their powers and grow crops, granted nightly when they hold spheres beneath the sky and ask his blessing. He asks nothing in exchange. They had tested his word and now have filled spheres. Their need to is what worries her. She thinks of Eshonai and of watching sunsets together on these plateaus, and the thought brings her peace even with the storm. Timbre thrums to Hope. Her mother brings tea and they hum together. *This may not be redemption,* Venli thinks. *Maybe just atonement. The redemption comes later, if I can keep improving.* Then Bila calls. They run past lounging chasmfiends and the Husked One who had asked to stay, down into the cavern she had quietly opened beneath Narak, and find the pool returning — a brilliant black-blue liquid, pulsing to a new rhythm whose name she knows on hearing it: the Rhythm of War. *It means,* she tells Thude, *that our little land is going to be important to the coming world.* The others hum to Determination as they watch the new god's power fill the hidden well.