At Narak Prime, Sigzil leads thirty Windrunners in a brutal aerial battle against Skybreakers and Fused while the enemy tries to break the city walls with Focused Ones hurling boulders. Sigzil fights aggressively, killing multiple attackers, because his larger goal is to buy time for a Lightweaver feint. The plan succeeds when the enemy suddenly pivots toward Narak Three, where illusions have made a lower-defended target look like a heavily guarded gemstone cache. Relieved, Sigzil sends word for his commanders to feign panic and deepen the trap.

Elsewhere in Azimir: Adolin opens a wagon carrying an enormous aluminum chain, part of an improvised plan to stop the thunderclast now inside the city. With Gallant, forty ordinary soldiers, and the Azish Shardbearer Neziham, Adolin prepares to trip the creature, oil the streets, and create one opening for a killing strike at the neck. Adolin knows conventional troops are poorly suited for this fight, remembers his earlier failure against a thunderclast in Thaylen City, and briefly speaks with Maya, who is still away pursuing what Adolin asked of her.

At the dome: Commandant Zarb Kushkam hears horns announcing a major incursion and leaves the wounded to take command personally. Because he has already sent Neziham to aid Adolin, Zarb must face the new threat without his Shardbearer. Outside the dome, he discovers Deepest Ones rising directly from the stone in the plaza, proving that the city is being attacked on multiple fronts at once. Zarb gathers his guard, sends for help, and charges them, fearing Azimir may fall that day.

Back at Narak: Sigzil receives an urgent spanreed message from Leyten: Moash has been found on the north side. Sigzil orders Leyten not to engage and rushes there, but arrives at a suppression field that strips Windrunners of their powers while leaving Moash free to use his Honorblade. Sigzil and his squires crash to the ground as Moash kills one of Leyten's squires and cuts off retreat. Leyten tries to hold Moash with only a knife, and Sigzil reaches them long enough to stab Moash in the back with his specialized anti-Light knife, but Moash barely reacts.

Sigzil then sees how far Moash has changed: crystal eyes glowing with Voidlight jut through his skull, and those eyes can see Vienta. While Sigzil tries to distract him with talk about their former brotherhood, Moash uses the anti-Stormlight knife to kill Leyten's spren Ethenia, then drives the knife into Leyten's chest. Moash escapes with a Bridge Four salute before reinforcements arrive. Sigzil desperately tries to drag Leyten out of the suppression bubble and save him, but Leyten dies after speaking a Death Rattle in which he seems to identify himself with Sigzil, foretell death at a friend's hands, and echo the fate of a failed captain. Edgedancers arrive too late, and Sigzil is left grieving, haunted by the prophecy and by the deaths Moash has added to Teft's.