Five years after Gavilar’s assassination, fifteen-year-old recruit Cenn joins Brightlord Amaram’s army and is placed in Kaladin Stormblessed’s squad. Veteran Dallet steadies Cenn, while Kaladin scouts terrain, selects a small rise, and prepares signals. Kaladin’s men keep shields on their backs to outrun enemy volleys, then form tight ranks at the hill.

The first enemy charge breaks against Kaladin’s V formation, and the squad holds defensively, shifting between formations using Kaladin’s spear-on-shield rhythms. Around them the battlefield dissolves into chaotic clusters, but Kaladin’s team avoids overextending and suffers only minor wounds while deterring larger groups.

As the wider line collapses, Kaladin orders a retreat toward a firmer Alethi position. En route they are intercepted. Cenn is separated, wounded in the thigh, and about to be killed when Kaladin charges alone, felling or disabling six spearmen in rapid succession and binding Cenn’s wound as the squad reforms around them.

Seeing an opportunity, Kaladin targets a mounted lighteyed battalionlord, driven by resentment and the chance to earn a transfer to the Shattered Plains. He slips through the melee and drops the officer with a thrown knife to the eye. While runners are signaled for the wounded, Dallet explains Kaladin’s habit of bribing them and rescuing barely trained youths like Cenn.

As Amaram’s line surges back, a true Shardbearer on a massive black horse rides in, gleaming in Plate and bearing a curved, ornate Shardblade. Dallet calls the subsquad to form up, but Cenn—faint from blood loss—can only watch in awe and dread as the threat bears down, imperiling the squad.