Long before the present story, the Heralds abandon the Oathpact after a brutal Desolation, leaving one of their number, Talenel, to bear the torment alone. Centuries later, at a treaty feast in Kholinar, the Shin assassin Szeth-son-son-Vallano publicly kills King Gavilar Kholin on the Parshendi’s orders, ensuring the act is seen. With the king’s last breaths, Gavilar entrusts a strange black sphere and a message for his brother, Dalinar, urging him to find “the most important words a man can say.” The assassination shatters the brief peace and launches Alethkar into a grinding war against the Parshendi on the Shattered Plains.

Five years on, soldier Kaladin Stormblessed is a gifted squadleader who rescues the green recruit Cenn and fells a lighteyed officer mid-battle. When a Shardbearer massacres his men, Kaladin’s desperate spearwork kills the armored foe—but Brightlord Amaram takes the spoils, executes Kaladin’s surviving comrades, and brands Kaladin a slave to silence the truth. Months later, Kaladin arrives in Highprince Sadeas’s warcamp and is condemned to Bridge Four, the most expendable crew in a system that throws unarmored men at chasm crossings to absorb enemy arrows. Beaten, starved, and stripped of hope, Kaladin nearly takes his own life during a highstorm before a curious windspren, Syl, coaxes him to “try one more time.”

Kaladin pivots from despair to responsibility. He bribes the sadistic sergeant Gaz to be left alone, trains publicly to earn credibility, and begins caring for his crew, using scavenged knobweed sap and his surgeon’s training to save the wounded—defying orders to abandon non-walkers. He forges a brotherhood around stew, song, and discipline, then experiments with tactics, including a side-carry to shield the bridge. Success draws punishment: he is brutally beaten and hung to face a highstorm as “judgment.” Miraculously, he survives; a sphere in his hand is inexplicably drained, and Teft quietly confirms Kaladin can draw Stormlight and heal. With Syl at his side, Kaladin embraces the role of protector and rebuilds Bridge Four into a hardened, trained unit, crafting lightweight armor from Parshendi carapace and refining formations to minimize casualties.

Elsewhere, Highprince Dalinar Kholin tries to hold a fractious coalition together while clinging to the ancient Codes of War. During a royal chasmfiend hunt, he saves King Elhokar’s life with bare hands, catching a descending claw in Shardplate. But the king’s paranoia grows after a suspiciously cut saddle girth, and Highprince Sadeas—Elhokar’s favored—and Dalinar snipe at one another over honor and results. Dalinar suffers recurring highstorm visions that show ancient battles and Radiants. They carry the refrain “Unite them” and insist a new Desolation approaches. Unsure whether they are divine or delusion, Dalinar tests them against history (with Navani Kholin’s help) and tries to model unity: enforcing the Codes, pushing for coordinated assaults, and proposing a single Highprince of War to end the self-defeating competition on the Plains.

In Kharbranth, Shallan Davar arrives to beg wardship from Jasnah Kholin, a brilliant scholar maligned as a heretic. Rejected, Shallan studies overnight, earns acceptance, then pursues a hidden agenda: replacing Jasnah’s Soulcaster with her family’s broken fabrial to save House Davar. Jasnah’s staged “lesson” in a dangerous alley—Soulcasting four assailants to stop a string of murders—forces Shallan into a moral reckoning. Pressed by her brothers’ dire spanreeds, Shallan steals the device. When an ardent named Kabsal arrives with rare jam and collapses, Jasnah reveals he was an assassin targeting her with backbreaker powder; she saves Shallan by Soulcasting her blood. The theft unravels as the fabrial spills from Shallan’s pouch. Shaken by guilt and by the symbol-headed figures haunting her sketches, Shallan inadvertently slips into a realm of beads—Shadesmar—and transforms a goblet to blood without wearing a fabrial. Later, she confronts Jasnah with evidence that Jasnah Soulcasts unaided. To prove herself, Shallan speaks a personal truth—admitting she killed her father—falls into Shadesmar again, and is rescued by Jasnah, who agrees to teach her under strict honesty.

As war grinds on, Dalinar seeks alliances. Sadeas is named Highprince of Information to investigate the king’s “assassination attempt,” and he eventually clears Dalinar by showing the tampering predated Dalinar’s involvement. A tentative partnership forms: Sadeas’s swift bridges seize plateaus; Dalinar’s heavier troops cross chull-drawn bridges to crush the Parshendi. The joint tactic works spectacularly—until the day of the Tower. There, a second Parshendi army appears, and Sadeas betrays Dalinar, withdrawing every bridge and abandoning him and Adolin to annihilation.

Kaladin and Bridge Four, nearly free to slip away, choose instead to protect. Syl reveals herself as honorspren, and Kaladin leads his crew back, drawing a thunderous volley into his shield with Stormlight, then leaping the chasm as he swears the Second Ideal: to protect those who cannot protect themselves. They set a lone bridge under withering pressure, hold the crossing, and organize the Alethi retreat. Kaladin disables a Parshendi Shardbearer to rescue Dalinar, and the army escapes. In the aftermath, Dalinar confronts Sadeas, then trades his Shardblade to purchase freedom for every bridgeman. He forces a private reckoning with Elhokar—who admits staging the earlier saddle incident—and compels the king to name Dalinar Highprince of War to unify the campaign and reform the warcamps. Dalinar gives his Plate to Renarin and places Kaladin—now a captain—over an autonomous guard drawn from freed bridgemen.

Across the world, Szeth continues a bloody list of killings, demonstrating Windrunner Lashings even against Shardbearers and half-shard defenses. In Kharbranth, he discovers his secret master is King Taravangian, who harvests prophetic “death rattles” from the dying and claims monstrous acts are necessary to save the world. Taravangian orders Szeth to kill Dalinar quickly and brutally to prevent Alethi unification.

Jasnah’s research collides with Shallan’s drawings and a web of intrigue. She concludes the Voidbringers are the parshmen themselves—peaceful servants who, under the right trigger, could transform into the enemy of legend. The revelation is urgent and explosive; she and Shallan set course for the Shattered Plains to investigate Parshendi origins, even as Shallan connects the tattooed symbol on Kabsal to the Ghostbloods—a shadowy group also tied to her father’s dealings.

Finally, a highstorm seizes Dalinar into a culminating vision. He realizes the images are recordings: the Almighty himself speaks from the past, reveals he was killed by Odium, warns of the Everstorm and a True Desolation, urges restoration of the Knights Radiant, and counsels unity—perhaps even binding the enemy to a single champion. As the book closes, Wit witnesses a ragged man force open Kholinar’s gates with a Shardblade. He names himself Talenel’Elin, Herald of the Almighty, and declares the Desolation has come, collapsing as the final, ominous confirmation of what the visions foretold.