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*The Shattered Plains had been shattered again.* Kaladin walks across the wreckage in the morning light with the assassin's silvery sword on his shoulder. Heaps of rock and fresh cracks scrawl across the plateaus; lakes of standing water shimmer in the broken places; one entire plateau has crumbled into the chasm with its torn base showing a black, charred edge. He breathes in Stormlight, Lashes himself weightless, and pushes off lightly to drift across each chasm. *Will it be this bad every time?* he asks Syl on his shoulder. She does not know — the Everstorm is a new thing, not of her — and hopes only that it will be this bad only when it collides with a highstorm like this one. Laits, Kaladin thinks, will no longer be laits. Buildings made to face away from the storms will suddenly be exposed.

At the round central plateau he stops, sets the assassin's sword point-first into the rock, and asks her what it is. *Dangerous.* She steps off his shoulder onto invisible stairs and tells him plainly: this is not a spren-Blade. *I think this is one of the Honorblades, the swords of the Heralds.* Any man who holds it becomes a Windrunner without the checks a spren bond requires; it feeds on Stormlight at dangerous rates. *Be careful with it. It is a treasure.* Kaladin hefts the weapon back onto his shoulder and walks on. A hill on this plateau — the crem-mounded Oathgate dome — has men moving around it. Teft scrambles across the rock at the sight of him. Drehy, Peet, Bisig, Sigzil, and a towering Rock crowd after him. The Assassin in White is dead.

Inside the lit chamber waits a tall, oddly familiar new face. Kaladin tenses when the cap turns out to be a red-and-black skullplate. *Rlain?* The man salutes in the Bridge Four manner, the company tattoo blending up into the skullplate. Dalinar has pardoned him — not for being Parshendi, Rlain corrects, but for being a spy, *a spy for a people who, it appears, no longer exist.* Rock lays a hand on his shoulder. The dead count comes in around the edges of the welcome. Bisig keeps his right hand in his coat pocket — grey skin showing at the cuff — and Teft tells Kaladin quietly that Rod is dead to the Parshendi. Then, quieter: he swears he saw a couple of the lads beginning to glow with Stormlight at the end. And one more thing. *Your eyes, son. Pale blue, like glassy water. Lighter than that of any king.* Kaladin turns away from the realisation he did not want — he is a lighteyes now — summons Syl as a Blade, and uses her to take them all back to Urithiru.

Shallan stands at the front gates of the tower, looking up at it, trying to comprehend. Inside, Adolin commands the exploration and Navani sets up a camp for the wounded. The Oathgate crossing has drained almost every gemstone they brought, including Navani's fabrials — and the more people moved, the more Stormlight required. Already they must ration to explore the tower. Scribes call her *Brightness Radiant* in uncomfortable bows. *Am I one of them?* she asks Pattern. *Almost. Still a few Words to say.* Not an oath, he tells her. *Lightweavers make no oaths beyond the first. You must speak truths.* She finds Dalinar and Navani supervising spanreed warnings going out to every warcamp and city — the new storm rounds the world, hits New Natanan tonight, then enters the eastern sea, then in days rolls in from Shinovar and across the continent, laying waste to cities thought protected. The king has vanished. Kholinar is in a state of riot. One of the columnar Oathgates flashes. Bridge Four appears at its top. Kaladin floats down to land in stride before Dalinar, Navani, and Shallan with the assassin's sword on his shoulder, slave brands on his forehead, pale-blue eyes glowing softly. The assassin is dead. Navani grabs his arm: her son. *There was an assassination attempt. I stopped it. I put him someplace safe.* Where? Kaladin smiles.

In a small Herdazian hovel in Little Herdaz inside Sebarial's warcamp, Lopen sits with a sphere clutched in his single hand while his mother, in the next room, scolds the king of Alethkar in the same stern tone she uses with the axehounds for not finishing his food in her house. Two of Lopen's strongest cousins guard the door; four more sew boots at the corner. Uncle Chilinko ducks in — word from Sebarial is that something has been found out on the Plains and they may need to move, *king man* in tow. Lopen looks at the sphere once more, the way he has every day since Captain Kaladin started glowing. He sucks in Stormlight. It works, for an eyeblink — then winks out. But when he feels his shoulder, a new nub of flesh has sprouted from the scar where his arm should be. *Oh, storms yes! Everybody, give the Lopen your spheres! I have glowing that needs to be done.*

Out beyond the warcamps, Moash rides at the back of a wagon with his hidden Shardplate in crates and drugged-dark eyes. Behind him every warcamp is emptying at Dalinar's orders — even Sadeas obeys this time — all parshmen left behind, every person making for the centre of the Plains. Graves joins him, dressed in patchwork rags as a darkeyes too, and surveys the merchants gathering at the empty warcamp edges to loot. *They deserve what is coming.* What is coming, Moash asks. *Everstorm.* The Diagram is vague; they knew the name only because of old Gavilar's visions. It will return the Voidbringers — and the Voidbringers, it turns out, have been the parshmen all along. *That woman was right.* What woman? *Jasnah Kholin.* The sentences will not knit together for Moash. *Who are you really?* *A patriot, just like I told you.* Graves admits his read of the Diagram was wrong — removing Elhokar was meant to make Dalinar his ally — and grips Moash's arm: bringing back a Shardbearer means the mission wasn't a complete loss. He will introduce him to the Diagram. Their work is *the salvation of the entire world.* The wagon starts rolling again. *I've been played for one of the ten fools,* Moash thinks, *and I don't even know how.*