Moash lies blind and devastated in a loud room in Kholinar, having been recovered from the snows near Urithiru. Without Odium’s old protection from feeling, Moash is consumed by guilt over killing Teft and haunted by his last memory of Navani surrounded by light, with what seemed to be Teft’s accusing spirit behind her. He begs Odium to take his pain away.

A different Odium answers him. This new god refuses to numb Moash’s emotions, arguing that pain is the cost of doing what is right and that Moash’s agony proves he is not a monster. Odium reframes Teft’s death as a necessary sacrifice carried out by someone who cared, then calls Moash a hero rather than a murderer.

To secure Moash’s loyalty, Odium shows him a vision of armies bringing peace, order, and retribution across many worlds. In that vision, old injustices are corrected and the powerful are brought down, possibly under the Blackthorn’s command. Odium pushes Moash back toward the grievance that first drove him: the belief that kings and lighteyes escape justice while ordinary people suffer. Moash accepts this argument and agrees to serve again, deciding that someone must do what others will not.

Odium then turns Moash over to others for a brutal procedure. Restrained and gagged, Moash endures spikes of light driven through his skull and eye sockets, an agony that nearly breaks him. When it is over, he discovers he can see again in a new way: not normal sight, but outlines of living beings, gemstones, and spren as Investiture. An unnamed woman confirms that the process worked, and Odium tells Moash he has been remade into a specific kind of weapon. Moash, embracing the name Vyre, agrees to continue serving.