POV: dalinar
Summary
Dalinar stands in darkness in the shadowed family home he grew up in — drapes from Azir his mother was proud of, the wooden swords he collected. *Back before conquest, back before Gavilar.* In the next room he can hear his brother laughing. He crosses to the balcony doors and pushes them open. Warm light bathes him — deep, enveloping, piercing — and he stares into it without being blinded. The source is distant, but he knows it, knows it well. He smiles. Then he wakes alone in his temporary rooms in Urithiru a week into the exploration of the tower, with sphere-recharged spheres trickling in from the warcamps and the Everstorm still circling somewhere west. This vision came outside a highstorm; that has never happened before. He dresses to go up.
Walking the dark corridors marking his progress in chalk, Adolin hears voices ahead and finds — of all people — Sadeas inspecting a faded mural with his own scouting party. Wind chose to bring Sadeas here too, of all whom did not. Adolin greets him; Sadeas strolls up the hallway in white that does him no favours, admits there is more fight in Dalinar than he had feared, and then sketches out the lie he will spread: the new *Radiants* are a show Dalinar arranged with the Parshendi, conveniently featuring the head of his own guard and his son's betrothed. *Why are you like this, Sadeas?* *Because it has to happen. Your father will never trust me again, Adolin, and you know it. I will take this from him.* Something snaps. Adolin grabs him by the throat with his unwounded hand, slams him back into the wall. They wrestle on the floor — sweating, panicked, no Blades summoned — and Adolin comes up on top, dazes the older man by slamming his head against stone, and drives his sidesword knife up through the eye socket into the brain. *My father thinks I'm a better man than he is. Unfortunately for you, he's wrong.* Sadeas's Shardblade — Dalinar's Oathbringer, won by trade — appears beside the corpse. Adolin picks it up and drops it down a window into a terrace planter to hide it, scrapes the chalk mark off the wall with his own Blade, cuts the bloodstained cuffs free, and walks calmly away to find a scouting party of his own to pretend he was with all along.
Dalinar uses his Shardblade to cut around the crem-sealed roof trapdoor and steps out into Urithiru's small roof under open sky. He looks down at the ten columnar plateau-pillars far below — and recognises that the one in Kholinar is the same: it is the dais on which the palace and royal temple sit. Then he turns to the clouds and shouts. *You sent that storm to destroy us! You tried to end this before it could begin!* The clouds answer this time. The visions, the Stormfather says, were not His — they were the Almighty's, and He had been required to deliver them once the time arrived. He cannot disobey any more than refuse to blow the winds. The Stormfather Himself is not the Almighty — only His spren, *the memory men create for Him now that He is gone.* Odium destroyed the Almighty. The Everstorm rounds the world now, carries the enemy's spren with it, and *any of the old people it touches will take on their new forms.* Voidbringers. There is no way to stop it.
Dalinar insists. He has been commanded to refound the Knights Radiant and will join their number. *Life before death! Strength before weakness! Journey before destination!* The Stormfather roars that He is the sliver of the Almighty Himself, that He will not let Himself be bound in such a way as to kill Him. *Fortunately,* Dalinar says, *I know the second oath I am to make. I don't need to be told it. I will unite instead of divide, Stormfather. I will bring men together.* The thunder silences. *Very well. These Words are accepted.* The Stormfather warns He will not be a simple sword, will not come as called — and that Dalinar must divest himself of *that monstrosity* he carries. Dalinar summons the stolen Shardblade — screams fill his head — and drops it. The bond severs in an instant, what should have taken concentration and stone. He asks about the morning's vision of warmth. *No vision was sent this morning. A simple dream. Not of me, nor of gods.* Curious, Dalinar thinks; it felt the same way as the visions, if not stronger.
He walks down off the roof into the windowed room atop Urithiru — ten short pillars ringing one — where Kaladin and Shallan wait. He holds up a sphere and breathes Stormlight in. It feels not like the Thrill but like a storm raging inside; his wounds heal in a way that feels *familiar*, as if he has done it before. The Stormfather called him Bondsmith. *That makes three of us,* Shallan says — Windrunner, Bondsmith, Lightweaver. *Four,* a voice answers from the stairwell. Renarin steps into the lit room and shrinks back. No spectacles — Stormlight has already healed his eyes. The screams from his summoned Blade in the duel arena were not madness. *I thought it was me. My mind. But Glys, he says...* He meets Kaladin's eyes. *Truthwatcher. I see.* Dalinar squeezes his trembling son's shoulder. Four orders returning.
*Damnation,* Kaladin says when Dalinar tells them the Everstorm will change the parshmen on its next pass. His parents are back in Hearthstone and the city lord Roshone keeps parshmen. He is going. *How? You'll fly the entire distance?* *Fall. But yes.* Dalinar sends Renarin to requisition emerald broams from Elhokar — finally arrived, in the company of a group of Herdazians, of all things, one claiming his name needed to be added to the lists of Alethi kings. He watches his Truthwatcher son go eagerly and notes that he will probably need to stop sending him on errands. At the eastern window — the flat, balcony-less face of the tower that looks directly toward the Origin — Shallan tells him *Kaladin will only have time to save a few. There are four of us, Brightlord. Only four against a storm full of destruction. So many will die.* *And we will save the ones we can. Life before death, Radiant. It is the task to which we are now sworn.* She pursed her lips, still looking eastward, but nodded. *Life before death, Radiant.*