Rhythm of War

Book 4
131 chapters

Characters

Locations

Factions

Lore

World

Events

Book 4
Ch. 4The Fourth Bridge Evacuates HearthstoneNavani pilots the first flying transport to rescue Hearthstone's people and the Mink's resistance fighters from singer occupation.
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Ch. 11Kaladin Retires from Active DutyDalinar relieves Kaladin of combat command due to battle fatigue, appointing him highmarshal and encouraging him to heal and find new purpose.
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Ch. 39Adolin's Bond with Maya DeepensThrough daily sword kata and genuine respect, Adolin's bond with the deadeye Maya allows her to move and eventually testify, challenging the belief that deadeyes cannot choose.
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Ch. 42Raboniel Corrupts the SiblingDuring the invasion of Urithiru, Raboniel corrupts the Sibling's crystal pillar, inverting the tower's defenses against Radiants and suppressing their powers.
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Ch. 74Venli Discovers Her Dawnsinger HeritageUsing her Radiant powers to shape stone, Venli communes with ancient stones that reveal her connection to the Dawnsingers and teach her their songs.
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Ch. 103Shallan Integrates Her PersonasConfronting her past and the truth that she killed her first Cryptic spren as a child, Shallan integrates Veil and Radiant, refusing Mraize's demand to kill Kelek.
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Ch. 104Maya Testifies at Adolin's TrialDuring Adolin's trial before the honorspren, Maya speaks for the first time since becoming a deadeye, declaring that the spren chose to break their bonds during the Recreance.
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Ch. 107Navani Creates Anti-VoidlightThrough mathematical analysis and a vacuum chamber, Navani creates the first gemstone containing anti-Voidlight, a tone that can permanently kill Fused.
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Ch. 117Teft's Death at Moash's HandsWhile attempting to rescue the unconscious Radiants, Teft confronts Moash, who kills Teft's spren Phendorana with an anti-spren dagger and then kills Teft with his Shardblade.
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Ch. 121Kaladin Swears the Fourth IdealIn a vision of Tien's death, Kaladin confronts his guilt and accepts that he cannot protect everyone, swearing the Fourth Ideal and manifesting Shardplate from windspren.
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Ch. 122Venli Swears the First IdealDuring the battle for Urithiru, Venli swears the First Ideal of the Radiants, becoming a Radiant who can use Voidlight and inspiring Leshwi to turn against the Pursuer's forces.
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Ch. 123Navani Bonds with the SiblingNavani joins her song with the Sibling's to create Towerlight, bonding as a Bondsmith and restoring the tower's defenses against the occupation.
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Ch. 124Ishar Attempts to Steal Dalinar's BondDalinar seeks Ishar's help to restore the Oathpact, but the mad Herald attempts to steal his bond to the Stormfather using his recovered Honorblade.
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Ch. 125Dalinar's Contest of ChampionsDalinar negotiates a contest of champions with Odium, agreeing that if he loses, his soul will serve Odium as a Fused, while victory would restore Alethkar and Herdaz.
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Ch. 126Taravangian Ascends as OdiumAfter Szeth stabs him, Taravangian reaches into the spiritual realm, takes Nightblood, and kills Rayse, ascending to become the new vessel of Odium.
Book 4
Ch. 130Eshonai's Death in the ChasmDuring the Battle of Narak, Eshonai falls into a chasm while dueling a human Shardbearer, her final moments spent with the Stormfather as she accepts her death with wonder.

Chapters

1Prologue: To Pretend
Seven years before the present, Navani struggles to manage Gavilar’s lavish treaty feast while he shuts her out of a secret project and cruelly attacks her ambitions, marriage, and worth. After their final argument, she returns to her duties—only to learn that Gavilar has been assassinated by the Parshendi; standing over his body, she finds regret and pity rather than grief, and resolves to preserve his legacy while keeping the kingdom together.
21. Calluses
In fogbound Hearthstone, Lirin tends starving Herdazian refugees while secretly helping the resistance’s leader, the Mink, evade singer inspectors; his surgeon’s composure masks grief, anger at war, and a stubborn refusal to condemn those fighting it. When a Fused arrives searching for a young, branded spy, Lirin realizes the target is his son Kaladin—and the reunion he feared erupts as Kaladin bursts alight with power.
32. Severed Cords
Kaladin battles a new Fused whose teleporting, body-hopping attacks nearly kill him, then returns to Hearthstone burdened by exhaustion and his unresolved conflict with his father. Meanwhile, Veil’s carefully staged provocation in the Sadeas warcamp finally succeeds when her wine is drugged, setting her capture in motion. As the fog lifts, Kaladin reveals a vast flying platform and explains that he has arranged to evacuate Hearthstone’s people rather than leave them behind.
43. The Fourth Bridge
Navani pilots the Fourth Bridge, the first flying transport, into Alethkar to evacuate a town and rescue the Mink’s scattered soldiers. As she takes pride in the ship’s promise while mourning Elhokar and worrying over Urithiru’s mysteries, an old sailor warns that airships may overturn the world he knows; Dalinar’s authority also quietly chafes against Navani’s ownership of the vessel. The mission’s fragile optimism gives way to looming danger when a Windrunner reports three flights of Fused approaching.
54. Architects of the Future
Radiant, Veil, and Shallan take turns navigating an ambush-turned-infiltration as Veil is initiated into the Sons of Honor in a humid chasm beneath the Shattered Plains. The cultists’ claims and their allegiance to Ialai reveal a deeper threat: they may have an informant close to Dalinar, prompting Shallan to seize control and confront them. The scene shifts from controlled deception and dry humor to urgent alarm.
65. Broken Spears
At Hearthstone, Kaladin leads the Windrunners in a defensive aerial battle while refugees evacuate aboard the Fourth Bridge; his pursuit of Leshwi reveals both their mutual respect and his growing exhaustion, as a mysterious red-light Fused slips through the fight. Meanwhile, Shallan poses as a seller of stolen fabrial plans to draw the Sons of Honor toward Ialai, but Adolin’s intervention disrupts the ruse. Between skirmishes, Kaladin resists his companions’ concern and wrestles with grief and resentment, even as he begins to acknowledge that Roshone may be changing.
76. A Loose Thread
Veil reaches Ialai Sadeas under the guise of a captive, revealing her intent to assassinate the woman she sees as a threat to Shallan’s loved ones. In the skies above an evacuation, Kaladin honors the duel with Leshwi even as Sigzil is gravely wounded; their fierce contest turns into wary mutual respect when they agree to stop a Fused attacking civilians. Meanwhile, Navani oversees refugees boarding the Fourth Bridge and glimpses Moash, the man who killed her son, as the chapter’s tension shifts from secret plotting to battle and personal reckoning.
87. The Rarest Vintage
In the warcamps, Shallan confronts Ialai Sadeas, who mistakes her for a Ghostblood agent and hints at the group’s ambitions before dying suddenly in custody. Shallan and Adolin are left questioning whether Ialai was poisoned by an unseen accomplice, while Shallan begins to suspect the room holds secrets the Ghostbloods want hidden. Elsewhere, Kaladin defeats a Fused inside his burning childhood home despite a Voidlight fabrial suppressing his powers, then sends the device to Navani; the chapter’s tense victories give way to suspicion and unease.
98. Surrender
Kaladin searches the burning manor for Roshone, only to find Jeber and another prisoner dead and Moash killing Roshone. Moash’s surrender and bitter arguments force Kaladin to confront his guilt, exhaustion, and despair; as he falters, Renarin’s radiant light drives Moash away and helps Kaladin rise. Meanwhile, Shallan investigates Ialai’s rooms, discovers a hidden notebook by following clues in the wine and ancient stone carvings, and leaves with Adolin and the gathered papers. The chapter moves between fire and smoke, a shadowed cellar, and a quiet search, carrying an atmosphere of grief, suspicion, and fragile hope.
109. Contradictions
As the Fourth Bridge lifts away from Hearthstone, Kaladin struggles with exhaustion, guilt over Moash, and the fear that he will lose everyone he loves; Syl and Teft urge him back toward his duties. En route to the Shattered Plains, Navani investigates mysterious fabrials and receives a threatening warning over a spanreed about imprisoning spren. Meanwhile, Shallan confides in Adolin about the Ghostbloods and Ialai’s death, but keeps her own membership secret, deepening her fear that deception is creating a new persona within her.
1110. A Single Casualty
As Kaladin leads the Windrunners back to the fortified outpost of Narak, he urges the honorspren Yunfah to consider bonding with Rlain, then faces Dalinar’s order to leave active duty. Dalinar names the toll of trauma Kaladin has tried to hide, offering him a chance to recover and serve another way; Kaladin accepts, but fears that losing battle means losing the one thing that matters. The chapter closes on the quiet devastation of a soldier who feels he has become his comrades’ casualty.
1211. Passion and Courage
In occupied Kholinar, Venli manages Lady Leshwi’s household while secretly building a listener community determined to escape both Fused oppression and human rule. After testing a recruit and witnessing Leshwi’s wary compassion, Venli explains her fragile hopes for freedom and alliances beyond Odium; the chapter’s tense, clandestine calm breaks when Leshwi arrives with warning of a dangerous shift in the war.
1312. A Way to Help
Arriving at Urithiru after a successful mission, Kaladin struggles with being removed from active duty, feeling isolated even among the Windrunners he once led. Adolin draws him into the lively Ten Rings tavern, where friendship eases his despair long enough for him to acknowledge his fears and worry about Shallan; the evening ends with Rock announcing he will return to the Horneater Peaks to face judgment, leaving Kaladin grieving another farewell.
1413. Another Hunt
After a lonely morning among her brothers in Urithiru, Shallan confronts painful fragments of her childhood and discovers Mraize has been posing as one of their guards. In a meeting beneath the tower, he reveals the Ghostbloods’ interest in transporting Stormlight between worlds and sends her to infiltrate the honorspren city of Lasting Integrity to find Restares, tempting her with answers about the world—and her own past. Shallan leaves drawn forward by curiosity and longing, even as her fragmented selves and fear of what she may uncover deepen the chapter’s uneasy, intimate mood.
1514. Voice
At Kholinar’s transformed singer palace, Venli attends a conclave where the Fused debate human advances and Leshwi challenges the Pursuer’s right to hunt Stormblessed. Raboniel, a newly awakened and dangerously ambitious former leader, wins approval to infiltrate Urithiru and seize control of the tower, recruiting Leshwi and Venli’s staff for the mission. As Venli’s hopes for singer independence sharpen against her mistrust of the Fused, Timbre urges her to see the coming invasion as an opportunity to learn from the Radiants.
1615. The Light and the Music
After stepping down from leading the Windrunners, Kaladin searches for a new purpose and finds Rlain thriving in a gemstone-lit farming experiment—but Rlain refuses a reluctantly offered honorspren bond, insisting he deserves one freely given. Kaladin seeks counsel from Zahel, who tests him in a fierce sparring match and concludes that Kaladin still loves the fight too deeply to become an ardent; afterward, Zahel reveals his nature as a returned dead man and explains the Fused’s immortality. The chapter moves through Urithiru’s training grounds, experimental fields, and windswept laundry lines, balancing Kaladin’s uncertainty and disappointment with moments of wonder and hard-won insight.
1716. An Unknown Song
Navani questions Szeth about the strange, air-warping sphere Gavilar entrusted to him as he died, confronting both her anger toward Szeth and her unresolved grief for her husband. Later, amid Urithiru’s bustling Cloudwalk, she cherishes Gavinor’s growing confidence, investigates signs that the tower can regulate its environment, and entrusts the mysterious sphere to scientists for study. The chapter closes with Dalinar, Jasnah, Adolin, Shallan, and the Mink gathering to discuss military plans, balancing a fragile sense of community against war, loss, and lingering mistrust.
1817. A Proposal
In Urithiru, Navani watches Shallan and Dalinar reveal a luminous map of Roshar to the newly rescued general, the Mink, who swiftly rejects Dalinar’s desire to retake Alethkar and urges a focused offensive in Emul instead. As the strategy shifts toward stabilizing Makabak and eventually seeking knowledge from the Shin, the family’s war councils turn inward: Jasnah presses ahead with plans to free Alethi slaves, while Dalinar wrestles with the costs of war and the possibility of defeat. The chapter closes on a fragile note of purpose as the Heralds arrive and Jasnah commits to joining the Emul campaign, linking military strategy to the search for a way to end the conflict.
1918. Surgeon
Kaladin welcomes refugees from Hearthstone to Urithiru and shows his parents the rooms prepared for them, including a fully equipped surgery. As he contemplates leaving military life, Lirin’s fear that Radiant healing has made surgeons obsolete gives way to renewed purpose—and Kaladin finally tells his parents he will continue his surgical training. The chapter balances the grandeur of Urithiru and the uncertainty of change with warmth, family banter, and a fragile sense of hope.
2019. Garnets
In Urithiru, Navani pursues the tower’s mysteries while overseeing a breakthrough in portable fabrial technology and imagining how highstorm energy could power lifts and even fleets. At a coalition meeting, Taravangian’s unexpected support for an offensive into Emul deepens her and Dalinar’s suspicions, while Sigzil urges diplomacy with the honorspren and an envoy is chosen for Shadesmar. The chapter closes in the couple’s private rooms, where Navani steadies Dalinar’s fear of betrayal and they share a tender farewell to the security of their familiar life.
21I-1. Sylphrena
As a highstorm approaches and sweeps over Urithiru, Syl delights in its music and movement while worrying that she cannot truly understand the darkness Kaladin faces. She asks the Stormfather to let her feel Kaladin’s pain, but he warns that her wishes are dangerous and says he lacks the ability; Dalinar likewise refuses to manipulate their bond, urging her instead to remain present for Kaladin. Remembering her own grief after her former knight Relador died, Syl begins to see that her past may help her understand Kaladin after all.
22I-2. Sja-Anat
Moving invisibly between the Physical Realm and Shadesmar, Sja-anat sends one of her Enlightened children toward the tower while secretly maneuvering to preserve her freedom from Odium. When Odium confronts her, she conceals her rebellion and persuades him to send her with Taravangian instead, sensing a fracture between his Vessel’s mind and the Shard’s power that she may exploit. The chapter’s tense, calculating mood frames Sja-anat as both a protective mother and a god willing to sacrifice some children to shield others.
23I-3. Into the Fire
In his rooms at Urithiru, Taravangian gathers his closest companions for a farewell, knowing his alliance with Odium has made him a disposable diversion and that he will likely die without honor. He dissolves the Diagram’s organization, sends his friends away to protect Kharbranth, and entrusts his daughter’s future to Adrotagia. Alone at last, he watches the flames and drops the book that shaped his choices into the fire, ending the chapter in quiet grief and hard-won resolve.
2420. The Unseen Court
In Urithiru’s cavernous reservoir chamber, Radiant trains the Unseen Court while preparing for Shallan and Adolin’s mission to Shadesmar, wrestling with the choice of whether to trust her agents—or bring her suspicions along. Veil overrides the group’s agreement and selects several possible Ghostblood spies for the mission, while Shallan struggles with the danger of turning against her friends. That evening, Veil discovers a mysterious cube from Mraize that can connect them across realms, and resolves to enter Shadesmar on her own terms as the hunter.
2521. The Seething Knot
As Adolin prepares to lead an expedition into Shadesmar, he visits Kaladin and offers him a keepsake and the possibility of returning to dueling, while acknowledging the pain and uncertainty that follow them both. At Urithiru’s Oathgate, the team gathers, and Adolin’s farewell conversation with Dalinar exposes their unresolved conflict over independence, duty, and the burden of becoming a Radiant. Shallan activates the gate, carrying the expedition from the chill plateau into Shadesmar amid a mood of anticipation and strained affection.
2622. No Use Talking
Adolin leads his Radiant companions and soldiers into Shadesmar, where the luminous, spren-crowded reflection of Urithiru gives way to a long descent and a journey by barge toward the honorspren stronghold. Along the way, he deepens his quiet bond with Maya, navigates the group’s varied hopes and beliefs, and resolves to pursue the mission in his own way. Meanwhile, Shallan discovers that someone has moved her communication cube and realizes the spy among them has reported to Mraize, adding unease to the chapter’s wonder and fellowship.
2723. Binding Wounds
In Hearthstone, Kaladin finds a steadier purpose treating patients alongside his father, even as the work cannot entirely quiet his worry for the comrades leaving for war. Watching the Windrunners depart sharpens his loneliness, but Teft’s unexpected arrival—and his refusal to leave Kaladin alone—offers a small, deeply welcome reprieve. The chapter’s quiet, bittersweet mood turns toward companionship and a new path in service.
2824. Full of Awe
On the Shadesmar barge, Shallan withdraws while Radiant and Veil struggle over control, until Veil gives up investigating the suspected spy and coaxes Shallan back through humor and drawing. Reunited with Adolin, Shallan shares the truth about trying to rob Jasnah and finds comfort in their playful intimacy, while learning that Heralds may know more about Ba-Ado-Mishram; the chapter closes on a fragile calm shadowed by deeper secrets.
2925. Devotary of Mercy
Kaladin and Teft trace Noril, a traumatized, suicidal refugee, to a shadowy monastery in Urithiru, where he is confined under ineffective care. Kaladin brings him into the sunlight and, drawing on his own experience with depression, helps him begin to speak; the encounter strengthens Kaladin’s sense that he can protect people by improving mental-health care as well as by fighting. He resolves to take Noril into his care and push the ardents toward new treatments, leaving the chapter with cautious hope amid the weight of suffering.
3026. A Little Espionage
Aboard the barge crossing Shadesmar, Shallan enjoys drawing until the Cryptics’ attention stirs old panic, then turns to the spy investigation with Veil and Radiant’s help. Her conversations uncover Ishnah’s misguided support of a criminal enterprise and give Beryl and Vathah distinct clues about a possible corrupted spren, while exposing Vathah’s guilt and loneliness—and Shallan’s own struggle to accept her past. As Formless stirs and Shallan withdraws, the chapter’s investigative momentum gives way to a more intimate, uneasy reckoning with identity, trust, and self-forgiveness.
3127. Banners
As Dalinar’s forces depart Urithiru for Azir, Navani wrestles with anxiety over his safety and Gav’s first campaign, while sharing a rare, sincere moment of connection with Jasnah. Left behind to govern, she delegates the warcamps to Sebarial and reflects on the life and purpose she wants; then, amid her daily work in the tower, she examines a newly uncovered hidden room and its intricate model of Urithiru—until a mysterious spanreed signals a new message.
3228. Heresies
In a guard post at Urithiru, Navani and her scholars investigate a mysterious spanreed correspondent who condemns fabrials as prisons for spren and demands their release. Their measurements place the hidden writer somewhere inside the tower, while Navani grows convinced the correspondent is a spren with an unseen agent. After the link abruptly breaks, she deliberately drops the spanreed over the plateau’s edge, hoping the staged loss will draw the watcher into revealing their next move. The exchange leaves the chapter tense and morally unsettled, with Navani turning cautious suspicion into a calculated trap.
3329. A Cage without Bars
Adolin’s party reaches a small Shadesmar waystop, where he cautiously sends Shallan to scout while the others explore. As Adolin’s daily sword kata draws the deadeye Maya into moving beside him, he challenges the belief that spren cannot change; meanwhile, Shallan’s inner voices wrestle with guilt and secrecy before she contacts Mraize through a mysterious cube. In the bustling settlement, Adolin encounters a recently afflicted deadeye and learns that humans are present—an unsettling discovery that deepens the chapter’s atmosphere of fragile hope and mounting unease.
3430. The Betrayal
In Shadesmar, Shallan’s communication with Mraize triggers fragments of buried childhood memories, while her carefully planted false clue exposes Beryl as a possible spy—though Veil doubts the evidence is too easy. Adolin investigates a guarded Tukari camp, then confronts Notum, who reveals that the honorspren have exiled him for helping Syl and will reject Adolin’s diplomatic mission; shaken by the injustice and his own doubts about usefulness, Adolin resolves to find another way to earn their hearing.
3531. Daughter of Traitors
As Venli’s strike team crosses the frozen mountain wilderness toward Urithiru, she studies the Deepest Ones and questions Raboniel about their powers, the Surges, and why the Fused serve Odium. Raboniel’s perceptive, seductive arguments expose how much she understands Venli’s ambitions—and make Venli fear her even as she longs for knowledge; Rothan’s warning offers a reminder that Leshwi’s soldiers value her. The quiet march ends with the looming prospect of a more dangerous test at Urithiru.
3632. Of Three Minds
In the obsidian landscape of Shadesmar, Adolin and Zu spot the Tukari caravan still following their dwindling group, but decide not to confront it. As the caravan travels on, Shallan struggles to trust their suspicions about Beryl and wrestles with her divided selves; in a private conversation, Veil explains Shallan’s fear that her true self is monstrous and unlovable. Adolin responds with patient reassurance, leaving Veil—and the hidden Shallan—feeling that they need not face their pain alone.
3733. Understanding
Kaladin begins treating six men at the sanitarium by bringing them together to share their pain, discovering that mutual support can counter the despair that isolation deepens. As the men talk in the sunlight outside his clinic, he reflects on the darkness of his own past and the distance between being sympathized with and truly understood. The chapter closes on a modest but hard-won hope: feeling less alone is a start, even if it cannot fix everything.
3834. A Flame Never Extinguished
As Adolin’s delegation debates how to persuade the honorspren at Lasting Integrity, Veil worries their mission will fail and suspects Beryl may be the spy among Shallan’s agents. On a walk through Shadesmar’s surreal obsidian landscape, Adolin gently draws Shallan out of hiding; a majestic starspren inspires her to sketch, and their conversation reveals their shared pain over being held to impossible ideals by loved ones. The chapter shifts from political anxiety to wonder and intimate tenderness, ending with Shallan and Adolin drawing close.
3935. The Strength of a Soldier
In Shadesmar, Adolin realizes the Tukari were tracking Notum, not his party, and races ahead to find the honorspren bound and being tortured by a mob. Outnumbered and wounded, he fights to hold them off until Maya joins him, taking up a sword and mirroring the kata they practiced together; her presence lets him stand his ground until the attackers flee. Adolin’s impulsive rescue turns a diplomatic mission into a brutal battle, revealing the depth of his bond with Maya and his resolve to protect others even when the odds are overwhelming.
4036. The Price of Honor
After rescuing the exiled honorspren Notum from a Tukari attack, Adolin’s party presses on across the obsidian landscape toward Lasting Integrity. Shallan’s discovery that someone disturbed the powder in her locked communication trunk—and Pattern’s apparent lie when tested—shatters her trust and leaves her retreating inward. At the fortress, honorspren reject Adolin’s appeal and condemn him as a traitor; he demands a trial, then enters Lasting Integrity with Shallan, Pattern, and Maya, where he is immediately chained and imprisoned.
4137. Silence from the Dead
In Urithiru, Navani tests a scholar’s improvised lifting gauntlet before discovering that a phantom spren has planted a replacement spanreed—and that a captured messenger may be tied to the Radiants. As the Everstorm closes in, Venli’s company infiltrates the mountain beneath the tower; Venli kills a human soldier for the first time and is shaken by the violence, while Raboniel presses the invasion forward. Meanwhile, Kaladin and Lirin confront the neglect of mental illness, and Kaladin begins to see a new purpose in changing how the wounded are treated, even as news of a missing friend unsettles him.
4238. Rhythm of the Terrors
Navani investigates a devastating explosion in Urithiru’s tower, mourning two scholars and the vanished Voidlight sphere as she orders the laboratory preserved for clues. Far below, Venli endures the singers’ secret approach into the tower and witnesses Raboniel corrupt its crystalline heart, while Kaladin, over drinks with Teft and Rlain, apologizes for past harm and begins to accept that seeking help is part of healing. The chapter’s fragile moments of grief, connection, and self-understanding give way to dread as Raboniel declares the tower’s defenses turned against the Radiants and orders the city seized.
4339. Invasion
Across Urithiru, Radiants abruptly collapse, spanreeds and fabrials fail, and Kaladin discovers his Gravitation is gone as the tower comes under attack. Navani learns the tower’s spren, the Sibling, is being harmed and mobilizes messengers, while Kaladin struggles against his trauma and his father’s pleas to stay hidden. As Fused and singer forces seize the tower and communications fail, Kaladin is left feeling that Urithiru—and perhaps himself—has already lost.
4440. In for All
With the Radiants incapacitated and enemy forces pouring through Urithiru, Navani gathers the remaining officers and chooses a dangerous assault to reclaim the tower’s basement pillar, hoping to restore their powers. Teofil earns her trust by backing her command, while Navani reaches the hidden Sibling through the tower’s crystal and learns the enemy is corrupting it; the frightened spirit reveals that a great quantity of Stormlight may be needed to protect it. The chapter’s urgency and military desperation give way to a fragile, uneasy alliance.
4541. The Most Dangerous
As the singers seize Urithiru, Venli watches Raboniel reveal that her true aim is to study human fabrials and end the endless war through a dangerous partnership, while the Pursuer pursues Kaladin. Navani leads a desperate defense on the tower’s ground floor, using lightning rods and a feigned retreat to push toward the basement and restore the Radiants; above, Kaladin quietly tends to refugees in occupied Hearthstone, choosing restraint when a singer provokes him. Across the besieged tower, fear and violence press against small acts of mercy and the possibility of breaking old cycles.
4642. Armor and Teeth
As Urithiru falls, Navani uses a hidden gemstone and a Thaylen tuning fork to raise a protective barrier around the tower’s heart, then surrenders to Raboniel to spare its people and preserve a chance to save the Radiants. Kaladin and Rlain part on the tower balcony as Rlain chooses to enter the occupying forces as a spy, while Syl’s fear of abandonment exposes a rare vulnerability. The chapter moves from desperate resistance to occupation, its mood shifting between grief, ingenuity, and wary resolve.
4743. Men and Monsters
After learning that the tower has surrendered and the Radiants have been incapacitated, Kaladin struggles to accept his father’s call to protect people through healing rather than resistance. When singers arrive to seize the unconscious Radiants, he kills a Regal to save Teft, only to face Lirin’s horrified condemnation and their widening divide. Kaladin flees with Teft as the occupied tower becomes increasingly dangerous, carrying both the burden of his choice and the grief of losing his father’s trust.
48I-4. Vyre
In a quarry outside Kholinar, Vyre tests his Honorblade and embraces the emotional numbness he calls freedom, while Khen rejects the raids and chooses to seek a life of her own. Though he insists he is unchained, his fixation on Kaladin reveals the bond he cannot sever; summoned by Odium, he agrees to go to Urithiru and help break Kaladin through visions and fear. The chapter’s calm scenes of labor and changing city life give way to a foreboding alliance, as Vyre’s self-understanding narrows into a plan to drive his friend toward despair.
49I-5. Lift
In Urithiru’s hidden tunnels, Lift’s increasingly joyless food theft gives way to her fear of growing up and losing the bond with her dead mother; Wyndle comforts her as she admits she asked Cultivation to keep her from changing. When the tower’s strange disturbance disrupts her powers, Lift rescues a wounded red-feathered chicken and follows it through the tower, where she finds a murdered old man. A scarred stranger appears with the predatory green chicken and announces he has wanted to hunt Lift, turning her tender, uneasy refuge into a scene of imminent danger.
50I-6. A Boon and a Curse
In his stormwagon as the Everstorm wanes, frail and grieving Taravangian reads his old Diagram and recognizes the cruelty of his former plans—yet also discovers that Odium’s vision is clouded around Renarin and those close to him. When Odium appears in a dazzling golden vision, Taravangian exploits the god’s loneliness and vanity to glimpse his plans, finding that Odium fears Szeth and may be vulnerable after losing his hopes for Dalinar. Taravangian still orders the betrayal to protect Kharbranth, but as Dalinar’s soldiers arrest him, he resolves not to give up; beneath his fear and remorse, a dangerous new hope has taken root.
5144. Tinder Waiting for the Spark
Kaladin flees through Urithiru’s dark tunnels carrying the unconscious Teft, determined not to abandon his friend despite exhaustion, dwindling Stormlight, and the memory of his failures. Hunted by the reborn Fused known as the Pursuer and closing enemy patrols, he follows mysterious lights through hidden passages to an unsearched part of the tower, where he finally collapses beside Teft. The chapter’s mood is tense and claustrophobic, but Kaladin’s persistence carries him through the darkness.
5245. A Bold Heart, A Keen and Crafty Mind
Nine years earlier, adventurous Eshonai maps a thriving forest and follows its river, convinced that exploration reveals rather than steals nature’s secrets—until she encounters humans. Meanwhile, her sister Venli struggles with envy and self-doubt as she memorizes the old songs, then shares her ambition to discover warform with their mother and the elders. Eshonai’s startling discovery interrupts Venli’s moment of promise, shifting the chapter from youthful curiosity and aspiration toward the upheaval that will transform their people.
5346. The Weight of the Tower
Under Raboniel’s occupation of Urithiru, Navani agrees to work with the Fused while quietly seeking a way to protect her people; a technical exchange reveals how ancient spren became devices, even as she learns several of her scholars were killed. Elsewhere in the darkened tower, Kaladin endures a nightmare that turns his guilt over Tien and his comrades into accusations, then awakens beside the comatose Teft and finds a secret exit with Syl’s help. The chapter’s mood is tense and grief-laden, but both Navani and Kaladin begin to regain a measure of purpose.
5447. A Cage Forged of Spirits
From an aerial platform above a battle in Azir, Dalinar and the Mink oversee the rout of Taravangian’s traitorous forces while troubling reports suggest the enemy’s attack on Urithiru is part of a larger plan. When the Herald Nale confronts Dalinar, Dalinar’s Bondsmith power reveals visions of Nale’s past and the weakened Oathpact binding the Heralds. The encounter sharpens Dalinar’s sense that his duty has moved beyond commanding armies: he must understand his powers and seek a way to end the war by restoring the Oathpact or finding another means to bind Odium.
5548. Scent of Death, Scent of Life
Nine years ago, curious listener explorer Eshonai welcomes a human expedition to the Shattered Plains, bridging the language gap while marveling at their unfamiliar customs and technology. A chasmfiend’s appearance unsettles the visitors, but King Gavilar grows fascinated by Eshonai’s ancient knife and her people’s songs of lost cities and the Knights Radiant; before leaving, he gives them modern weapons in exchange for a promise to settle in a city on the Plains. The encounter shifts from wary discovery to a consequential, uneasy alliance, colored by Eshonai’s wonder and the king’s growing interest.
5649. Soul of Discovery
Trapped in Urithiru’s basement, Navani organizes her scholars as cover while learning from the Sibling how the tower’s protections were corrupted and how the shield she raised might be undone. Though the Sibling distrusts her, Navani finds a fragile connection to Kaladin, one of the few Radiants still awake. Moving secretly through the darkened tower, Kaladin gathers Stormlight and supplies for the incapacitated Teft, then agrees to investigate the enemy’s use of the Oathgates. The chapter’s mood is tense but quietly resolute, as both characters turn isolation into the beginnings of a plan.
5750. Queen
In the coalition’s war tent at Laqqi, Dalinar confirms the campaign against the singers will continue while he turns from battlefield command toward understanding his Bondsmith powers—and finding a way to force Odium into a decisive contest. His reflections on loss, duty, and the cost of abandoning Alethkar are interrupted when Jasnah uses a staged confrontation to defeat and disinherit Highprince Ruthar, exposing her willingness to wield violence in service of political change. Dalinar leaves unsettled by her methods, but wonders whether the same calculated pressure might make even a god afraid.
5851. To Sing Hopeless Songs
In Urithiru, Venli watches Raboniel supervise the sorting of human research notes and carefully deflects questions about her loyalty to Odium. Away from the crowded hallway, she and Dul discuss preparations for their people’s escape, weighing the risks of rebellion and the possibility of trusting humans; Venli’s resolve is shadowed by guilt and doubt about whether she can lead anyone to safety. As she returns through the corridors, she finally decides to tell Timbre the painful story of her past, beginning with the humans’ second visit.
5952. A Path Toward Saving
Eight and a half years before the main story, Venli worries as her mother, Jaxlim, begins forgetting the songs that have shaped their lives, while her adventurous sister Eshonai pursues the returning humans. In the ancient listener city on the Shattered Plains, Venli feels increasingly isolated and resentful of the humans’ attention, until Axindweth approaches her with forbidden knowledge and a glowing red gemstone, promising a way to save those she loves. The chapter’s uneasy, intimate mood turns toward temptation as Venli’s fear for her mother opens a path to dangerous change.
6053. Compassion
While gathering reports in the occupied tower, Venli learns that Kaladin Stormblessed remains conscious and that the Pursuer plans to punish his family. Guided by Timbre’s compassion and her own uncertain sense of Radiant purpose, she alerts Leshwi, who takes the family into protective custody. The chapter shifts from Venli’s quiet guilt over past selfishness to a tentative act of mercy, set against the tense, controlled spaces of the tower and the looming threat of violence.
6154. The Future Become Dust
After comforting young Gavinor about his father’s death, Dalinar moves through the busy warcamp, wrestling with Jasnah’s plans for Alethkar and reconnecting with Renarin over the evening stew. Away from the campfire, Renarin reveals a vision warning that Odium may prolong the war indefinitely, while explaining how his unusual bond with Glys obscures the enemy’s foresight and why Sja-anat’s changed spren may deserve acceptance. Their conversation ends in a rare moment of trust and closeness, even as Renarin and Glys recognize their isolation and the need for others like them.
6255. Kinship With the Open Sky
While tending to the unconscious Teft in a hidden refuge, Kaladin reassures Syl as she confronts grief over her former knight and fears that her emotions mean she is broken; he helps her see herself as a person who can choose and change. Leaving Dabbid to care for Teft, Kaladin climbs down the tower’s exterior to investigate the Oathgates, but misses their transfer and realizes the enemy’s scouts are using a spanreed—giving him a new target to steal for Navani. The chapter balances quiet tenderness and hard-won hope with the tension and determination of Kaladin’s covert mission.
6356. Nodes
Venli oversees the unconscious Radiants, quietly planning to use a waking Windrunner to help her people escape, and resolves to bring a hidden human surgeon to care for them. Later, while assisting the Fused in their search for the fabrial nodes protecting the tower, she realizes she may be able to practice her own powers unseen—but wrestles with fear and the risk her choices pose to her followers. The chapter ends with Mazish bringing startling news: another listener has been found.
6457. Child of Odium
Eight and a half years before the main story, Eshonai watches the humans prepare to leave and receives Dalinar’s warning that their attention may be dangerous, deepening her curiosity about the world beyond the Plains. During a highstorm, Venli breaks the red gemstone and encounters the Rider of Storms before releasing a spren who promises power and asks her to conceal their bond. She returns to the shelter apparently unchanged, but her missing rhythms and sudden swagger hint at a profound transformation, while Eshonai remains unaware of what her sister has set in motion.
6558. Spanreeds
In the occupied tower, Kaladin and Syl sneak through a laundry complex and outwit singer guards to reach a spanreed hub, where Kaladin steals a case of Voidlight-powered spanreeds. His exhaustion and trauma briefly overwhelm him, but he pushes onward when a tower node calls for protection, warning that the Lady of Pains is coming to seize its mind. The chapter shifts from stealthy, tense infiltration to urgent resolve as Kaladin turns toward a new danger.
6659. The Lattice of a Growing Crystal
Exhausted but compelled by a frightened tower spren, Kaladin fights his way through occupied Urithiru, using clever Lashings and hidden passages to evade the singers and Fused. At the tower’s exposed eastern wall, he confronts the Pursuer and a calculating Fused, destroys a sapphire node being used against the tower, and escapes wounded as his Stormlight and strength falter. His resolve to keep protecting others persists, even as the spear and the burden of hope remind him how fragile that resolve has become.
6760. Essai
Venli finds Rlain alive in a tower prison and, after their wary reunion, hears his insistence that she use her influence for others rather than herself. She wins his release from Raboniel by claiming him as precious kin, but her attempt to swear an oath to free the oppressed is rejected when she realizes she ignored a caged Radiant child. The chapter shifts from guarded hope to sobering self-recognition as Venli confronts the selfishness still limiting her growth.
6861. Oil and Water
Navani learns that Kaladin survived the night and is still buying her time, then devises a way to help him move through the tower by having engineer Tomor hide a lift device for him. Raboniel separates Navani from her scholars but draws her into studying the tower’s mysterious Light, revealing Towerlight and the possibility of mixing opposing powers; their exchange over oil and water briefly turns their captivity into a meeting of minds. Isolated in the library, Navani presses the distrustful Sibling for the locations of the remaining nodes, determined to turn scientific understanding into a path toward freedom.
6962. Keeper of Forms
Eight years before the main events, Eshonai returns from exploring to find Venli gaining influence among the elders by learning how to trap spren in gemstones, while her own appeals for the listeners to unite and explore the wider world are dismissed. Outside the council, Eshonai discovers that her mother, Jaxlim, is losing her memory; Venli’s new form may offer a way to preserve her mind, and Jaxlim agrees to try it. Eshonai’s hope for her mother mingles with unease at Venli’s ambition and a growing fear that change may divide the family.
7063. Practice
Haunted by nightmares and the pressures of the occupied tower, Kaladin tends to the unconscious Teft and shares a vulnerable conversation with Syl about choice, change, and pain. Navani equips him with a new lifting fabrial, and he tests it in the tower’s corridors, learning through painful crashes that it may serve both as transport and a weapon. Though his battle shock and exhaustion remain, Kaladin finds purpose in training and refuses to let his inner struggles define him.
7164. Personal Reminder
Jasnah enters the battle at Drunmu Basin to understand the cost of war firsthand, fighting in Shardplate until exhaustion and a brutal encounter with a Fused force her to unleash her powers. After resting, she reflects with Wit on her limits and the changing nature of warfare, then returns to the fight; by nightfall, the coalition has won a costly step forward. In her tent, Wit reveals that a Sleepless cremling spied on him and may have exposed their secrets, leading him to warn her that the Ghostbloods—and their leader, Thaidakar—pose a danger beyond Roshar.
7265. Hypothesis
Imprisoned in the tower, Navani studies light and discovers that Towerlight separates into distinct Stormlight and Lifelight, connecting her experiments to the strange sphere Gavilar once possessed. Her painful memories of his contempt sharpen into suspicion as Raboniel reveals her own urgent interest in combining Lights and promises to abandon the tower in exchange for answers. The encounter ends on a quieter note of grief when Navani learns the seemingly unhinged Fused is Raboniel’s daughter, whose failing mind forces the ancient mother to guide her away.
7366. Bearer of Agonies
Dalinar discovers he can see the web of Connections binding people and reality, but feels powerless to aid Navani or Adolin while the war moves on without him. He visits the imprisoned Taravangian, whose betrayal and belief in inevitable defeat force them to confront their opposing ideas of kingship, morality, and sacrifice; beneath their argument, both mourn the friendship and future they might have shared. Dalinar leaves determined to win without abandoning his oaths, promising Taravangian the chance to see him proven wrong, while Szeth warns that the former king may still be plotting.
7467. Song of Stones
Haunted by the memory of her mother and the deaths caused by her betrayal, Venli confesses her guilt to Timbre and chooses to explore her Radiant powers. In a quiet passage of Urithiru, Voidlight lets her commune with the ancient stones, which reveal her connection to the Dawnsingers and teach her to shape rock; the discovery gives her a rare sense of belonging and hope. When spren eager to bond her friends appear, Venli resolves to keep their powers secret and cautiously plan an escape through the collapsed tunnels.
7568. One Family
Eight years earlier, Eshonai accompanies her frail mother into a highstorm so she can adopt a new form, but the gemstone’s power transforms Eshonai instead: she becomes a warform and hears Honor’s long-lost pure tone. Reunited with other newly transformed listeners, she turns their strength away from a rival family’s attack and calls for unity against the humans, revealing both her growing leadership and the warform’s unsettling appetite for conflict. The chapter moves from a storm-lashed hollow to the listeners’ city and battlefield, shifting from intimate worry and wonder to exuberant possibility shadowed by looming danger.
7669. Pure Tones of Roshar
In the tower archive, Navani experiments with Stormlight, Voidlight, and Lifelight, learning that the Lights resist blending even as her inquiry deepens the mystery of Towerlight and the Sibling’s lost powers. She persuades the wary Sibling to reveal a hidden node and consider a possible singer bond, but the enemy reaches the node before Kaladin can act; Navani’s frustration turns to urgent resolve as she orders the Sibling to contact him and vows to distract Raboniel.
7770. Well
After waking from a nightmare, Kaladin learns the enemy is attacking another node and races through Urithiru with Navani’s experimental fabrial, fighting the Pursuer and Leshwi to reach the well. He destroys the node but is trapped underwater; battling panic and exhaustion, he finds another route out and emerges wounded as the Sibling’s corruption weakens his healing. With enemy troops closing in and a highstorm raging, Kaladin runs toward the deadly winds, driven onward despite his fear and failing strength.
7871. Rider of Storms
Newly at peace with his fear of highstorms, Dalinar rides the Stormfather through the storm and discovers the devastation it leaves behind—and the limits of the ancient spren’s compassion. Fighting against the storm’s momentum, he reaches Urithiru and finds Kaladin wounded and barely conscious, learning that the tower has fallen to the singers, Navani is captured, and the Radiants are incapacitated. Back in camp, Dalinar resolves to seek guidance from Ishar, the other Bondsmith, even as the revelation deepens his urgency and fear.
7972. Outmatched
Waiting in her library-room cell, Navani faces Raboniel and learns that the Fused had secretly monitored her conversations with the Sibling, using the knowledge to seize the third node. Sick with guilt over betraying the Sibling, she asks about Kaladin and hears that he fled into the storm with a wound that may not heal; left alone, she writes a prayer for his protection and confronts the scale of her failure.
80I-7. Szeth
While guarding Dalinar and young Gavinor in a forest clearing in Emul, Szeth struggles to imitate calm, haunted by his past and fearful that his own damaged soul makes him dangerous to the child. A private meeting with his highspren deepens the tension: Szeth is urged toward a future crusade in Shinovar and warned that he must eventually judge truth for himself. When he learns Taravangian has requested a smooth, quartz-veined stone—the kind used as an Oathstone—Szeth’s unease hardens into alarm, and he resolves to discover the man’s plan before Dalinar is killed.
81I-8. Chiri-Chiri
As Chiri-Chiri listens from Rysn’s desk, Rysn tells her former mentor, Babsk, that the mysterious Sleepless move among humans and that she has become entangled with the Dawnshards. Babsk agrees to help, though both feel the danger and the weight of past mistakes; meanwhile, Chiri-Chiri senses ominous rhythms urging her to face difficult times. The chapter ends on a tender, hopeful note as Chiri-Chiri begins speaking human words to Rysn, discovering that communication may bring understanding—and more scratches.
82I-9. The Sword
On a foggy, painful day in his prison, Taravangian struggles to follow the instructions his sharper self left behind, until Renarin visits and offers him compassion and hope for redemption. After Renarin leaves, Taravangian discovers that one of his guards is Szeth and pleads with him to use his dangerous sword against Odium, urging him to give it to Dalinar. Szeth refuses, and Taravangian is left crying, caught between the ruthless plans he once made and the shameful desire to trust others.
8373. Which Master to Follow
Eight years ago, Venli, guided and manipulated by the Voidspren Ulim, pursues forms of power and plans to prepare the listeners for war, while struggling with jealousy of Eshonai and doubts about Ulim’s influence. At home, hearing her mother Jaxlim falter through the listeners’ ancestral song reconnects Venli to her people’s founding ideals—and sharpens the painful choice she sees between resisting their gods and becoming enslaved by humans. She resolves to make the listeners fear human strength, arranging for Ulim’s agents to bring them to the Alethi palace so they will accept change.
8474. A Symbol
In occupied Urithiru, Venli struggles with guilt over her role in the singers’ rise while quietly planning an escape for her people. Rlain brings stolen maps to the infirmary, where he, Venli, and Lirin weigh the risks of resistance as the tower grows more violent. The sight of humans marking their foreheads with Kaladin’s shash glyph reveals a fragile new hope—one Lirin fears will invite slaughter, but Venli recognizes as a source of strength.
8575. The Middle Step
From the walls of Lasting Integrity, Adolin surveys a gathering of deadeyes as he awaits trial, while the fortress’s strange geometry and crystalline weather frame his growing concern for the spren. Elsewhere, Radiant and Veil search for Restares, but a confrontation with Pattern over his lies brings Shallan abruptly to the fore; she nearly reaches for a weapon before discovering that Sixteen is not her target. The chapter ends in a tense, unresolved shift as Shallan rejects Pattern’s attempt to explain and insists they move forward.
8676. Harmony
In Urithiru, a disheartened Navani apologizes to the silent Sibling before Raboniel draws her back into their experiments with Stormlight and Voidlight. Guided by gemstones and Raboniel’s singing, Navani discovers a shared rhythm that lets the Lights combine into the Rhythm of War, earning Raboniel’s reluctant respect even as she breaks her promise to leave the tower. Raboniel’s account of seeking a way to kill a god sparks Navani’s realization that Gavilar possessed a different, unknown opposite to Voidlight, leaving her with a revelation—and a host of dangerous questions.
8777. The Proper Legality
Seven and a half years before the treaty feast, Venli sneaks through Kholinar’s palace with the spren Ulim, seeking gemstones for his plans, but learns his contact has vanished and is soon caught by human guards. The Herald Nale secures her release and warns that King Gavilar plans to betray her people, steering Venli toward a Shin slave carrying Jezrien’s Blade; Ulim turns the warning into an argument for striking first. Abandoned, frightened, and feeling small, Venli embraces a war that could kill thousands, convinced it will force her people to accept the forms of power she promises.
8878. The High Judge
Shallan withdraws behind Veil after learning Pattern’s secret communications with Wit exposed information to the Ghostbloods, then reports to Mraize that Restares may not be in Lasting Integrity. Meanwhile, Adolin prepares for a trial that will test his faith in the honorspren’s justice, with the inkspren Blended warning that their idea of honor may differ sharply from his. The strands converge when Veil recognizes the newly arrived High Judge as Kalak, one of the Heralds—and the man Mraize may expect her to kill.
8979. Open Wound
In occupied Urithiru, Rlain endures suspicion from humans and singers alike, longing to be seen as himself rather than as a symbol of his people. While delivering supplies to the Radiant infirmary, he confers with Lirin and Hesina, whose maps and concern for Kaladin hint at resistance taking shape; a glimpse of the Shattered Plains also sharpens Rlain’s loneliness as one of the last listeners. The quiet, wary chapter ends with Dabbid finding him and revealing that Kaladin is asleep and may be dying.
9080. The Dog and the Dragon
Trapped in a tormenting vision of a barren, wind-scoured world, Kaladin is battered by visions of those he failed and comes close to surrendering. Wit rescues him into a brief shelter of light, where stew and the story of a small dog who longs to become a dragon help Kaladin see the worth of what he has accomplished; Wit promises that though life will worsen again, warmth will return. Kaladin leaves the refuge still facing the hateful storm, but with renewed strength.
9181. Trapped
Seven years before the present, Eshonai and her friends test their renewed warforms across the Shattered Plains, then confront the cost of killing Gavilar as Alethi forces gather to destroy the listeners. Though Eshonai vows to defend her people and their freedom, she privately fears they will be trapped and overrun. In a parallel scene, Venli recruits trusted scholars to accept Voidspren, believing that mastering forms of power will save the listeners—and secure her place as their savior.
9282. Knife
Veil confronts Mraize over his secrecy and learns he wants her to capture the Herald Kelek’s soul, then impersonate him to influence Adolin’s trial and bring the honorspren into the war. Though Shallan recognizes the plan’s moral danger, its promise of saving Adolin and helping the war—and Mraize’s offer of full membership—tempt her to consider it. Meanwhile, Adolin meets Kelek in the honorspren fortress and secures a public trial by witness, only to find the erratic Herald already expects him to lose; the chapter closes on distrust, manipulation, and Adolin’s daunting task ahead.
9383. The Games of Men and Singers
In Urithiru, Venli uses her powers to shape stone into a small procession of her ancestors, recovering the songs and love that ambition and Odium’s influence had made her forget. After learning of threats to Kaladin and his family, she helps Rlain and Dabbid rescue a captive Edgedancer who may be able to heal him, taking a cautious step toward becoming someone who protects others. The chapter moves from reflective hope to tense secrecy, ending with Venli wondering when she will be ready to speak the words of her new path.
9484. Scholar
Isolated in Urithiru, Navani turns her forced solitude into a chance to pursue the scholarship she has long doubted she could claim, secretly preparing defenses while investigating how Investiture and its opposites work. A small experiment with a divided spren and a Raysium dagger reveals a startling new fabrial effect, and Raboniel’s respect for Navani’s discovery begins to shift their uneasy collaboration. Beneath the excitement of scientific breakthrough, Navani remains driven by the fragile hope of saving the tower—and perhaps finding a weapon against Odium.
9585. Dabbid
As Dabbid leads Rlain and Lift through the occupied tower, he reflects on a lifetime of being misunderstood and the family he found in Bridge Four. Lift heals the fever-stricken Kaladin and awakens Teft; Kaladin wakes to his friends, while Dabbid recognizes that, despite not being Radiant or fearless, he has repaid a small part of the rescue that once saved him.
9686. The Song of Mornings
A year and a half into the war, Venli is convinced that bringing stormform to her people is necessary—but also driven by a growing hunger for power and freedom of her own. As she pressures a farmer to divert gemstones and prepares with Ulim to summon stormspren, an encounter with Eshonai and their ailing mother briefly draws the sisters into shared grief, childhood memories, and song. Their fragile closeness cannot undo their differences: Venli leaves knowing she has betrayed Eshonai’s trust, then ventures into the storm to hunt stormspren.
9787. Trial By Witness
In Lasting Integrity, Adolin faces the first day of his trial as three witnesses argue that humans—and their bonds with spren—cannot be trusted. Notum’s defiant cry, “Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men,” exposes deep divisions among the honorspren, while Kelek warns Adolin that the proceedings could drive spren to join Odium; Adolin remains determined to reach even a few of them. Afterward, Shallan stages a fall to gain access to the honorspren’s Stormlight store, where she secretly steals a gemstone, turning the chapter’s anxious political struggle into a tense act of espionage.
9888. Falling Star
During a tempest in Narak, Venli brings Eshonai a gemstone containing a strange spren and reveals that lightning enabled her to capture it, proposing the dangerous new stormform as a possible salvation for their people. Eshonai fears the cost, torn between resisting their old gods and preserving the listeners’ independence, but knows Venli’s discovery must be tested. Alone at the chasm’s edge, she confronts the storm with desperate questions, then survives a terrifying encounter with a chasmfiend when a mysterious white spren appears and drives the beast away.
9989. Voice of Lights
In Urithiru, Navani immerses herself in experiments with Raboniel, finding unexpected joy and recognition as a scholar even while the two remain enemies. Their exchange deepens into a fragile intimacy, but the Sibling’s failing voice and fear of death jolts Navani from self-doubt into urgent action. Watching music make patterns in sand, she realizes that Stormlight and Voidlight are vibrations—and that sound may reveal their opposites.
10090. One Chance
At the honorspren forum, Adolin argues that humans and spren can grow together, but a hostile audience exposes the Stormfather’s near-death, past Radiant failures, and a recently created deadeye, leaving Adolin’s case badly weakened. Later, in their dark room, Shallan comforts him as he doubts his ability to persuade the honorspren; when Veil sides with Radiant against killing Kelek, Shallan’s inner conflict shifts, and she presents herself to Adolin as Formless, encouraging him to continue.
10191. Worth Saving
Recovering in the occupied tower, Teft reunites with Kaladin, Rlain, Lift, and Dabbid as they reckon with the Radiants’ captivity, the missing final node protecting the Sibling, and whether continued resistance can help or only worsen the danger. Teft shares how his childhood disclosure led to his father’s death, reframing his painful past as part of what enabled him to save Kaladin; together, the group resolves to seek Navani’s counsel and plan a rescue. Amid exhaustion and looming threats, Teft ends the chapter smiling at the friends, purpose, and self-worth he has reclaimed.
10292. A Gift
While serving as Raboniel’s interpreter in the occupied tower, Venli confesses her shame and grief over the loved ones lost through her betrayal. Their conversation reveals Raboniel’s respect for Venli’s confusion and the burdens behind the Fused war, before she gives Venli a writ bearing news that a group of Listener refugees—including many children—may have survived. Venli flees with the discovery, her sorrow giving way to urgent hope.
10393. Strong Enough
On the day of Adolin’s judgment in Lasting Integrity, Shallan’s Formless persona attempts to kill High Judge Kelek and escape into the Ghostbloods, while Veil and Radiant challenge her retreat from painful memories. Veil helps Shallan reclaim the truth of her childhood and the spren she killed; accepting that grief, Shallan integrates Veil and refuses to harm Kelek. Her attempt to negotiate with him is interrupted by honorspren who accuse her of interfering with the trial, while Kelek appears to suffer another bout of weakness.
10494. Sacrifice
On the final day of Adolin’s trial in the honorspren forum, Sekeir uses Maya’s anguish to condemn humanity, but Adolin’s empathy helps her find the strength to testify: the spren chose to break their bonds. Her words overturn the trial’s assumptions and unsettle the honorspren, while affirming the bond of trust she and Adolin have built. As Maya rests and the crowd disperses, Blended recognizes that the truth complicates the past rather than resolving it, leaving Adolin with new questions—and a changed understanding of Maya’s agency.
10595. What She Truly Was
Fourteen months earlier, as the Everstorm gathers over a rain-soaked battlefield, Venli flees the chaos she helped unleash, clinging to visions of power and survival. After a human spares her and Eshonai falls into a chasm, the clash of storms strips away Venli’s self-deceptions: she recognizes that Ulim guided her supposed discoveries, that she cares chiefly for herself, and that beneath her ambitions she is a coward.
10696. A Thousand Lies
Venli learns that thousands of listeners survived, and confesses to Rlain the role she played in bringing about their people’s ruin. Though he condemns her, he trusts her enough to ask for help saving the fallen Radiants; Venli instead chooses to flee with Dul, Mazish, and the others, using Raboniel’s writ to seek the survivors. Her guilt and longing for her mother Jaxlim propel her toward a possible reckoning—and the only person she believes may still love her.
10797. Freedom
Driven by feverish curiosity, Navani discovers how to create anti-Voidlight, then uses a vacuum tube to capture it in a gemstone. When Raboniel tests the new Light on her daughter, she ends the Fused’s endless, diminished existence—and reveals that mercy, not a weapon against Odium, was her true purpose. Their fragile scientific partnership breaks as Raboniel takes Navani’s notes and equipment to pursue anti-Stormlight, intending to use imprisoned Radiants in experiments that could destroy their spren.
108I-10. Hesina
In Urithiru’s infirmary, Hesina studies reports from occupied Alethkar and worries about her father in Tomat, then confronts Lirin over his estrangement from Kaladin and his refusal to accept their son’s role as a soldier. She urges Lirin to see the hope Kaladin gives the tower’s caregivers, especially Noril, whose resolve to keep going is inspired by Kaladin’s own perseverance; the chapter closes on Hesina trusting Lirin to listen and change.
109I-11. Adin
In Urithiru, thirteen-year-old Adin dreams of becoming a Windrunner, convinced that courage and hard work will earn him a spren despite being a potter’s son. As unrest gathers around the atrium, his father leaves their pottery shop to watch over the Radiants, and Adin persuades him to come along, eager to face whatever is happening and prove himself. The chapter’s tone is hopeful and restless, balancing the ordinary rhythms of pottery-making against the growing threat and Adin’s fierce yearning for purpose.
110I-12. Vulnerable
As his intelligence wanes and time slips away, Taravangian struggles to devise a human plan to stop Odium, using his notebook to reason through Nightblood’s power and the god’s vulnerabilities. In his bathroom, Sja-anat appears in the mirror, reveals that Odium’s mind is exposed despite his vast power, and offers to lure him to Taravangian by sending two of her children in gemstones. Taravangian is left trembling but newly equipped with a dangerous chance to act.
11198. An Unwholesome Shade
After a hard-won victory in Emul, Dalinar surveys the battlefield and confronts how thoroughly he has changed: the former Blackthorn now recoils from killing, even as he weighs surrender against the danger of Odium. The Mink confirms Emul is nearly secured and reminds Dalinar of his promise to free Herdaz; then a scouting illusion reveals Ishar waiting in a Tukari camp, giving Dalinar a new, urgent lead toward reclaiming Urithiru and rescuing Navani.
11299. Not Bound
In a guarded room at the coalition camp, Jasnah studies her interviews with the Heralds and confronts how little the past can prepare her for an enemy who sees the future. Her intimate, intellectually charged conversation with Wit shifts from playful teasing to strategy: he proposes a contract that contains Odium regardless of the contest’s outcome and would let him aid Jasnah openly. Though wary of the stakes and uncertain whom she can trust, Jasnah is drawn to Wit’s mind and resolves to weigh his plan amid the looming struggle for Roshar.
113100. Watchers at the Rim
Kaladin jolts awake from a terror-filled nightmare to hear the weakened Sibling warn that the final node has been found and the captive Radiants will soon be killed. Though exhausted and shaken, he rallies Teft and Dabbid to launch a rescue, coordinate with Rlain and the queen, and escape the tower with the Radiants. Teft recognizes the danger may be another Pursuer trap and makes Kaladin promise to flee rather than sacrifice himself, giving the urgent plan a note of hard-won resolve.
114101. Undertext
In the Azish Prime’s lavish warcamp, Dalinar and Jasnah debate the grim prospects of retaking Urithiru, with Dalinar insisting that hope and a bold effort still matter. He reveals his plan to seek Ishar in Tukar and pursue a way to restore the Oathpact, while Jasnah lays out a strategy for the war and prepares a contract for Odium. After the meeting, Dalinar gives Jasnah his completed manuscript, *Oathbringer*, and asks her to write an open, critical commentary alongside it—a gesture of trust that turns their differences into a shared project.
115102. Highstorm Coming
At Urithiru’s Oathgates, Venli turns from escape toward responsibility, deciding to offer Kaladin and his family a route out and trusting her companions to follow. In her smoke-damaged office, Navani confronts the consequences of helping create a weapon that can kill spren, then discovers a surviving charge of anti-Voidlight. Meanwhile, Kaladin strides openly toward the Pursuer through a tower filled with people who believe in him, reunited with a shaken Syl and resolved to face one last battle despite his fear and exhaustion.
116103. The Legend You Live
As Kaladin holds the Pursuer’s attention in the atrium, Teft and Lift slip into the infirmary to free the unconscious Radiants and prepare an escape. Teft’s guilt gives way to resolve as he fights a stormform guard, but the plan collapses when Moash emerges from hiding, wounds Lift, and confronts him. Kaladin turns the struggle into a psychological contest, promising to destroy the Pursuer’s legend with every defeat; the chapter ends with Teft facing Moash and the Honorblade in the infirmary.
117104. Full of Hope
In Urithiru, Rlain and Dabbid are stopped by singer guards while trying to deliver water to the scholars, leaving their rescue plan in jeopardy. In the atrium, Kaladin turns the Pursuer’s confidence against him, while Venli witnesses the duel and recognizes the force of Kaladin’s resolve. Elsewhere in the infirmary, Teft’s hope and bond with Phendorana are shattered when Moash kills her, but Teft dies affirming that he is loved; the chapter’s hard-won defiance ends in devastating grief.
118105. Children of Passions
In the tower’s storm-lashed atrium, Kaladin defeats the Pursuer and rallies the watching humans—until Moash drops Teft’s corpse before him, shattering his hard-won triumph. Moash exploits Kaladin’s despair, destroys the tower’s final defensive node, and takes Lirin hostage, while Navani confronts Raboniel over the Sibling and lures her into a hidden fabrial trap. The chapter turns from defiant hope to devastating grief, then closes on Navani’s calculated resistance.
119106. A Hundred Discordant Rhythms
Crushed by Teft’s death, Kaladin sinks into despair as Navani uses a painrial and dagger to mortally wound Raboniel, only to be struck by Moash; Raboniel urges her to escape with the notebook that could end the war. In Urithiru’s atrium, Kaladin’s grief turns to ferocious action: he kills the Pursuer again and pursues the Heavenly Ones who have seized his father. On the storm-lashed tower roof, Lirin is thrown into the darkness, and Kaladin leaps after him, ending the chapter in a plunge of anguish and uncertainty.
120107. Uniting
Wounded and pursued by Moash, Navani reaches the crystal pillar and hears the Rhythm of War as Raboniel’s attack buys her time. Elsewhere, Dalinar witnesses Kaladin falling into despair and uses the brief stillness between moments to forge a connection, while Venli sees humans and singers resist the slaughter of captive Radiants and dares to reveal her Radiant light. Across Urithiru and the storm-dark space beyond time, the chapter’s grief and helplessness give way to fragile acts of defiance and connection.
121108. Moments
In a vision of the battlefield where his brother Tien died, Kaladin relives the moment and confronts his guilt over being unable to protect those he loves. Tien comforts him, helping him see that the moments of care they shared still matter; Kaladin then finds Syl in the darkness and accepts the Words: he cannot protect everyone. Renewed by this acceptance, he awakens to a sky blazing with pure light and resolves to save his father.
122109. Emulsifier
As Venli’s Radiant oath awakens hope in Leshwi, the Fused turns against the Pursuer’s forces, igniting a brief civil war in the tower atrium. Rlain takes command, unites humans and singers to treat the wounded and plan an escape with the unconscious Radiants, even as Teft’s death and Lift’s condition deepen the grief. Their fragile alliance moves toward the Oathgates under the threat of discovery, while Rlain learns Venli has no Shardblade to open them.
123110. Reborn
As Kaladin surges through the storm, he reaches his falling father just in time, while Navani—rejecting Moash’s assault and her own self-doubt—joins her song with the Sibling’s to create a bond and new Light. Kaladin and Lirin reconcile their differences as the tower’s people face the storm together; the chapter turns from near-death darkness toward renewed connection, purpose, and hope.
124111. Unchained
Dalinar confronts the increasingly delusional Ishar, whose recovered Honorblade lets him overpower the Windrunners and nearly steal Dalinar’s bond with the Stormfather; Szeth’s strange black sword interrupts the attempt, and Ishar vanishes into Shadesmar after urging Dalinar to seek him in Shinovar. Meanwhile, Navani and the Sibling restore Urithiru’s defenses, enabling Kaladin to rally the beleaguered defenders and drive the enemy from the tower, while Rlain’s group receives a new spren’s promise of salvation. The chapter closes on darker revelations: Ishar has been experimenting on spren, and Moash, overwhelmed by the pain of his actions, escapes the restored tower blind.
125112. Terms
After returning exhausted to the Emuli warcamp, Dalinar learns that Navani has awakened the tower and restored contact—then finds himself drawn into a golden-field vision with Odium. There, he negotiates a contest of champions that could end the war and restore Alethkar and Herdaz, but risks his own soul and immortality if he loses. Dalinar’s fatigue gives way to grim resolve as he accepts the terms, choosing a perilous chance at peace over years of likely defeat.
126113. Emotion
Newly bonded to the Sibling, Navani finds Raboniel alive and honors her final request, ending her life with anti-Voidlight as they sing together; exhausted but resolute, she turns to restoring order in the liberated tower. Elsewhere, on a storm-darkened day, Szeth confronts the emotionally overwhelmed Taravangian and stabs him, but Taravangian reaches into the world between worlds, takes Szeth’s sword, and strikes Odium. As the god’s power seeks a new vessel, Taravangian embraces it and Ascends, becoming Odium.
127114. Broken Gods
Rlain sees Venli and the new listeners off to seek refuge among their people, choosing to remain in Urithiru as a Radiant and a watchful bridge between singers and humans. Kaladin honors Teft with a stone funeral, then shares a tender moment with Syl as he accepts that grief will remain while shame can be laid down. Meanwhile, Taravangian takes up Odium’s power, struggles against its fury, and—newly emboldened—begins to see how he might use it to reshape the war and save the cosmere.
128115. Testament
In Lasting Integrity, Shallan accepts the truth of her past and her bond with Testament, frees the seon Ala, and breaks with the Ghostbloods, declaring war as she turns toward a wider future. Meanwhile, Venli approaches the surviving listeners seeking forgiveness and offering them Radiant bonds; reunited with her mother, she sings the old songs as a lightspren begins a bond, and discovers the listeners have allies—and a chasmfiend—of their own. The chapter closes on cautious hope, healing, and new beginnings.
129116. Mercy
After Teft’s funeral, Kaladin tells Dalinar he needs time away from command to heal, but agrees to help recover the mad Herald Ishar before Dalinar’s contest of champions with Odium, now only ten days away. Elsewhere, El subjects the newly reborn Pursuer to a lethal experiment, while Kaladin finds cherished belongings—including a wooden horse from Tien—in the transformed, newly illuminated Breakaway. As the tower’s warmth and light mark a hopeful change, Dalinar and Navani share a tender moment and face the uncertainty of the coming contest, with Dalinar reflecting on mercy and the Stormfather’s capacity to change.
130117. One Final Gift
Cast into a chasm after losing the battle for Narak, Eshonai fights the violent collision of the Everstorm and highstorm, refusing to die captive and reclaiming her will through the Rhythm of War. Mortally wounded, she learns she died Radiant and is granted a final passage across Roshar as the storm itself, seeing the world—and the hope within it—before accepting her death with wonder and peace.
131Epilogue: Dirty Tricks
In Elhokar’s former palace on the Shattered Plains, Wit entertains himself with sleight of hand while explaining how a knowingly false performance can make an audience believe. Odium confronts him over the contract, but a subtle shift in the Shard’s behavior reveals a new intelligence: it attacks Wit and strips away memories stored in his Breaths, leaving him disoriented and unable to recognize that the encounter has already happened. The chapter closes on a chilling loop, as Wit repeats the opening performance—less certain, still hiding his confusion beneath his act.

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