Kaladin limps to the palace through dark, under-guarded corridors, realizing Moash’s conspiracy is underway. He disables two impostor guards at Elhokar’s door and finds the king drunk and despondent. Committed to stopping the assassination, Kaladin attempts a quiet extraction despite his reopened leg wound.

On the battlefield, Adolin fights amid blinding rain and deadly red lightning while Parshendi rope teams harry him, clearly intending only to neutralize his impact. Recognizing their strategy, he orders Perel to prepare a distraction while he leads a battalion of heavy infantry to flank the singers gathered on a central rock formation.

Dalinar, coordinating between fronts, hears a disembodied voice that identifies itself as a remnant of the Almighty, not the deity himself. A messenger reports Teleb’s death and Roion’s rout. Dalinar rides to Navani and forces immediate execution of her plan: tarps hauled aloft by weighted lines and moisture-attractor fabrials to dry bowstrings, enabling archers to fire across the chasm and relieve Roion’s embattled troops.

As the archers turn the tide and Dalinar rides to exploit the opening, Kaladin rouses Elhokar and heads for a safer exit. One of the conspirator guards returns and stabs Elhokar, but Kaladin triages the wound and presses on through emptied halls cleared by the plotters. Elhokar collapses from wine and blood loss, forcing Kaladin to pause.

The confrontation arrives: Moash, in Shardplate, appears with Graves, blades ready. Kaladin stands over the wounded king, having rejected the assassination, as the conspirators move to complete their coup.