After a prologue that reframes Gavilar’s last night through Navani Kholin’s eyes—hinting at strange spheres and secret visitors—the story moves to two fronts: a bold humanitarian mission and an escalating war of knowledge.

Kaladin Stormblessed returns to his occupied hometown to extract refugees using the Fourth Bridge, an airship Navani has engineered from conjoined fabrials. The evacuation succeeds amid aerial duels with Leshwi’s Heavenly Ones and the debut of a new, teleporting Fused. Dalinar Kholin opens a perpendicularity to recharge his Radiants, and the coalition spirits Hearthstone’s people to Urithiru. Yet the price of endless fighting shows in Kaladin’s growing paralysis and sleeplessness. Dalinar removes him from frontline command, urging him to find a new way to protect. Kaladin chooses the surgeons’ hall, where, with Teft’s help, he pioneers compassionate, empirical care for those shattered by war.

Shallan Davar works the other battlefield: information. Her Lightweaver personas infiltrate the Sons of Honor and collide with the Ghostbloods’ goals. Learning that the honorspren have withdrawn from bonding, she and Adolin lead an embassy through Shadesmar to Lasting Integrity. On the long voyage, Adolin’s steady humanity and an awakening deadeye spren, Mayalaran, hint that the truth of the Recreance is more complex than a simple betrayal. Inside the fortress, a hostile trial turns when Maya speaks one halting truth—spren chose sacrifice—forcing the honorspren to reconsider the future with humans. Shallan, confronting buried memories, integrates a lost part of herself and severs her ties to the Ghostbloods.

In Alethkar and Makabak, Dalinar campaigns toward Emul while Navani chases mysteries in Urithiru: an inert crystal pillar, familiar garnets, and a spanreed correspondent who condemns fabrial “heresy.” Her investigations reveal a living tower spren—the Sibling—whose protections once defined Urithiru. That knowledge arrives just as Leshwi’s ally, the scholar Fused Raboniel, leads a stealth force through mountain tunnels. In a single blow, the invaders invert the tower’s field: Radiants collapse, fabrials go dark, and the Oathgates fall. Navani raises a temporary barrier around the pillar; Kaladin, uniquely still conscious, disappears into hidden passages with comatose Teft as Moash (Vyre) hunts him.

What follows is a siege of minds. Raboniel courts Navani’s genius to “end the war” through discovery, while methodically corrupting the Sibling. Navani bargains for time, builds covert defenses, and, with Raboniel, proves that Lights follow pure tones. Their collaboration yields a harmony of Stormlight and Voidlight—and the darker possibility of anti-Light. As the Sibling weakens, Kaladin becomes the tower’s last resistor: stealing spanreeds, sabotaging nodes that feed the suppression, and smuggling food, even as Moash’s precision cruelty fractures his resolve.

In the infirmary, Kaladin’s allies strike to wake the fallen. Moash ambushes them, destroys Teft’s spren with a raysium dagger, and murders Teft—shattering Kaladin when the body is thrown before him. With civilians painting shash glyphs in solidarity and soldiers mobilizing to slaughter helpless Radiants, the tower reaches a moral breaking point. Venli, secretly bonded to Timbre, chooses compassion over safety, freeing an Edgedancer to heal Kaladin and revealing her Light to Leshwi. In the atrium, Kaladin breaks the legend of the Pursuer with guile and grit, only to watch Fused hurl his captive father into a storm. He leaps after, prepared to die.

At the pillar, Navani, wounded and alone, resists Moash’s advance and finds within herself the tones of Honor and Cultivation. Matching them to the Sibling’s song, she harmonizes the tower and speaks her Words; the Sibling accepts her, and she becomes a Bondsmith. Above, in a time-stretched heartbeat, Dalinar forges Connection that lets Kaladin face the truth of failure: he cannot protect everyone. Speaking the Fourth Ideal, Kaladin dons living windspren Plate, saves Lirin, and returns to rout the invaders as Towerlight purges the corruption. Leshwi defects to shield the defenseless; Radiants across Urithiru awaken.

Elsewhere, Dalinar rides storms between wars. He meets Ishar, who wields the Bondsmith Honorblade, tethers Windrunners, and attempts to steal Dalinar’s bond—only for Szeth and Nightblood to sever the Connection. The camp reveals Ishar’s horrific experiments to force spren into flesh. Back at the front, Jasnah stabilizes Emul while Wit presents a binding contract for a contest of champions that will contain Odium regardless of outcome. Odium appears to Dalinar; the two set terms for a duel in ten days with Alethkar, Herdaz, and Dalinar’s soul at stake.

As Urithiru heals, costs surface. Teft is laid to rest. Rlain, newly bonded to Tumi, leads an evacuation with defecting singers. Navani grants Raboniel’s final wish and turns fully to repair and research. In Shinovar, Taravangian—whose betrayals once sundered the coalition—meets Odium in fury and, through a loophole and a terrible sword, seizes the Shard. A new Vessel wears Passion’s mantle, his designs hidden even from Wit, whose memories of the encounter are quietly erased.

In Shadesmar, honorspren reopen their halls. Among the listeners, Venli brings Radiant spren and a third path. And under a sky cleared by Towerlight, Kaladin chooses healing as a calling, preparing to help Dalinar face a mad god-priest—and the final ten days begin.