While teaching Dalinar in the Spiritual Realm, Odium is abruptly distracted when Cultivation moves against him in Kharbranth. He turns his attention to the city and sees her masked agents, equipped with advanced weapons and armor, sweeping in from black boats and cutting through the city guard with brutal efficiency. Because he has barred Fused and Unmade from the city, Taravangian has no nearby servants who can intervene.

The assault reaches the palace within minutes. Cultivation appears beside Odium and reveals her leverage: her infiltrators have already identified and confined Taravangian's daughter and grandchildren, with killers ready if he refuses to yield. She demands that he abandon his current course, accept an immediate armistice with the human coalition, and return the Kholins' kingdom.

Taravangian realizes this was not merely a contingency. He accuses Cultivation of choosing him as Odium partly because she believed she could control him through the one thing he truly loves: his family and home. He then turns her argument back on her, claiming that conflict serves Cultivation's Intent because struggle drives growth, and that her demand for peace comes from fear that she misjudged him.

Having decided his path is certain, Taravangian chooses a response meant to remove all future leverage against him. In the ocean offshore, he raises an enormous wave. Cultivation is horrified and begs him to stop, even offering to back down, but Taravangian says the act is a lesson not only for her but for anyone who might try to intimidate a god.

As he prepares to strike, Taravangian mourns the people he is about to kill, including his daughter Savrahalidem, his grandchildren, and old Diagram allies such as Maben and Adrotagia; he notes that Mrall has already died trying to protect his family. Yet he proceeds because Kharbranth is uniquely within the bounds of what he can directly destroy, due to the promise once made to him as a mortal. Odium then annihilates Kharbranth completely, sacrificing the very city Taravangian spent his life trying to save.