Chapter 207

Adolin plays a strategic teaching game with Emperor Yanagawn as the final defense of the dome reaches its crisis point, then is called to battle. Meanwhile, Shallan confronts Mraize in a vision and learns that Iyatil is searching for a mysterious prison, while Kaladin discovers from Nale that Ishar, the Herald of Wisdom, has been manipulating events in Shinovar all along using a fraction of Odium's power.

Adolin meets with a surgeon who approves his recovery from his amputation, though warns him to use caution. As battle intensifies around the dome, Adolin plays towers—a strategic board game—with Emperor Yanagawn and May Aladar to distract himself and teach the young emperor a crucial lesson about three-party conflicts: when one player becomes too dominant, the other two will ally against him, a principle called the Sunmaker's Gambit that applies to politics and warfare alike. When desperate horns sound calling all able-bodied fighters, Adolin sends Yanagawn to a saferoom despite the emperor's desire to fight, telling him the kingdom needs him alive more than it needs another soldier. Adolin and May prepare to join the defense, though reinforcements from Urithiru are limited and hours away.

In a vision, Shallan confronts Mraize on a dead beast by the ocean. She realizes his spren invited her there as a distraction while Iyatil searches for a mysterious prison. Mraize reveals he was promised the ability to travel to other worlds and collect trophies, but has been punished with ten years of restriction for failing to recruit a successful Radiant. He implies that killing Shallan would lessen his punishment. Despite the tension, neither acts decisively—Mraize admits he has been asking if there is another way, and Shallan hesitates to strike. They part with an understanding that their next meeting will be a true fight. Shallan resolves to stop hiding and instead let Odium show her visions, hoping to find the prison's location before Iyatil does.

At a broken monastery, Kaladin prepares dinner as Nale sits traumatized, having recovered some sense of his former self as a Herald. Nale reveals a devastating truth: the Voice in Szeth's head was not an Unmade but Ishar, the Herald of Wisdom, who took a fraction of Odium's power from a well of divine energy. Using this power, Ishar Connected with all the people of Shinovar and posed as a god, creating the Honorbearers and manipulating them into making Szeth Truthless. Nale acknowledges that the Heralds themselves are the true Truthless for denying the Return and failing to fight it. Ishar awaits at the final monastery to initiate Szeth as a Herald. Nale provides the location of a Stormlight cache, and they prepare to travel through the night to confront Ishar at dawn.