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Wit wakes in a bed far from Roshar — soil, budding skyscrapers, firearms outside the window. It had worked. He would continue to exist. He dresses from the drawer he had left stocked years earlier. Ulaam steps in, ashen-skinned and in his black suit. *Ah, Hoid. Our little experiment worked, hmmmm?* He had been found on the laboratory floor that morning, regrown from a cell culture of his own flesh the kandra had kept alive for years on his instruction. They are already trying to reach Roshar, Ulaam says — but time there now runs far slower than the rest of the cosmere. Months for them. Hours for those at home. Autonomy is moving; there is even a message that seems to come from Taldain. If he returns through the bubble he will be trapped for who knows how long.

He sits back. He could not return. The people he loved on Roshar — Design left behind, his apprentice Sigzil now carrying a power neither of them knew the full cost of, a woman he had loved, youths he had mentored — were on their own. He had to protect Scadrial first. *Novelty,* he whispers. *Who am I to speak of novelty? I'm far too late for that.* Then his eyes open. He takes a small bone from his pocket and reaches into the meditative realm of the dragons, where he is always an interloper, and from the ancient dead discovers something he had never suspected: Dalinar had been an absolute storming genius.

Adolin sits in the Azimir chamber where the Prime is traditionally chosen, a month and a half after the confrontation atop Urithiru; outside, rain has been beating on the metal roof for so long he has stopped hearing it. With him are Yanagawn in his regalia, Noura, Kushkam, Notum standing small-sized on the table, May and most of the Unoathed. Maya has returned from Urithiru across Shadesmar — possible because of her strange bond with him — and he opens with the news. His father is dead. Retribution has the world. The tower is sealed in a glass dome. Renarin freed Ba-Ado-Mishram and does not yet know what it means. The Radiants there still have their powers but cannot leave. The Unoathed still have functioning Shards without Stormlight — something the Heralds did at the end protects their spren. Their deadeyes are recovering; Maya has eyes again, the scratches now only faded scars. But Noura reminds them: the storm never stops, and there is no Stormlight to heal anything. Adolin looks at the metal piece of Plate he wears as a foot.

The door slams open. Zabra in Shardbearer hokra: *Everyone, come outside! The rain is ending.* They pile out. On the side table Adolin picks up the book he has left there — Oathbringer — and follows under his arm: he is learning, haltingly, to read in his own language, because if he can never see his father again he can at least try to understand him through his own words. Outside, the clouds part. Sunlight comes down like a column his father used to make. Adolin raises his fist in salute. In coming weeks they will find the sun reaches exactly to the edge of Azir and no farther — the Purelake barriers broken, flooding rising, the rest of the continent (and Shinovar with it) cloaked in eternal night. A light remains in Roshar, small though it might seem.

Shallan, months adrift in a Shadesmar that has been cold since Stormfall, pushes through a crowd at Haka'alaku to look at an empty crater. Cultivation's Perpendicularity is gone. She might never see Adolin again. Her hands go to her stomach. The Radiant part of her tells her she can survive — shipping lanes are planned to Urithiru, where Towerlight will allow manifesting food and water — and there must be other ways back. She finds Felt and uses his seon, Ala, to call the Lord of Scars. Through long-delayed messages he tells her the rest: time around Roshar runs months for her, years for him — perhaps seventy or eighty cosmere years to realign, worst now and slowly easing. Leaving for another world will cost her decades for everyone she cares about left behind. He accepts a truce: with Stormlight gone and Mishram freed, Roshar is too small to matter, though Iyatil's brother may break away and one day come for vengeance. She demands Ala herself as reparations; he agrees, on the condition the seon report back. Shallan immediately sets her to find Olo, another of Wit's seons who fled the tower months earlier, and send him to Azimir. If it works she will at least be able to talk to her husband.

Sigzil walks, cloak tight, tongue dry. The Dawnshard keeps him alive, lets him sense the world in new ways, and is beginning to change his body. He has not slept since Wit gave him the burden, and has spent months crossing the bead oceans by begging passage and dodging Fused. Lights resolve out of the obsidian: the Iriali caravan traveling offworld. He had sought out Vienta first; she lives, healed by whatever happened at the End of All Things, but does not want to see him, and he does not blame her. The Iriali sort him to the rear with other non-Iriali; a family lets him climb into the back of a chull-wagon. A highspren climbs in beside him — out of Roshar now that Cultivation has fled and her bond with Honor no longer locks them — admits, then, that he is the highspren Szeth rejected, that he is nameless, that he is a failure who only wants to be listened to. He will tell of Kaladin's time in Shinovar. Sigzil shrugs and lets him talk, holding Wit's burden and waiting for the return Wit promised.

It is months by mortal time on Roshar — years outside it — before Retribution can spare a thought for the planet itself, and he checks the broken geography with a cold satisfaction tinged with frustration at Dalinar — *foolish, stubborn Dalinar — the man who had known.* In his avatar form he slips into the Spiritual Realm and into a vision he has been quietly keeping going indefinitely. A perfect copy of Kharbranth, populated by tens of thousands. His daughter. His grandchildren. Adrotagia. In the moment Cultivation had looked away to kill him, he had pulled the city's occupants out and into the vision before allowing her killers to destroy what remained, and had wiped their memory of the killers, replacing them with the impression of a strange disease. He walks his streets and embraces Adrotagia in the throne room as *Vargo*. He climbs to his throne and his grandchildren are brought to crawl into his lap. The city will persist here, isolated and protected from whatever he does in the cosmere. His secret. His dangerous, shameful secret: that even Taravangian, in a moment of pain and passion, had refused to sacrifice everything. He embraces his grandchildren, weeping, and the power simmers — hating Dalinar for having been right.