Sacrifice

by arborplasm

Summary:

Kaladin is Force-sensitive, and a part of a rebel cell resisting the rule of the powerful King of Alethela, Gavilar Kholin. When he leaves the moon Rathalas in ruins with his powers, Kaladin and her crew pursue him, but Kaladin is captured -- and, thought not without costs, manages to kill the Emperor himself. She's frozen in carbonite, soon discovering that the Emperor isn't dead at all -- but now a passenger in her mind.

Five years later, she's freed by her former allies, now on the run from the Eternal Empire of Zakuul -- including the Emperor's own volatile children, Elhokar, Jasnah, and Adolin. With the welcome help from her allies, and the unwelcome help from the Emperor, Kaladin must decide what the cost of victory is truly worth.

Notes:

hi :) new fic time.. jangles miserably across the floor.. please comment.... it is my lifeblood

Chapter 1: Honor is Dead

A man can have anything… if he's willing to sacrifice everything.

 

Kaladin opens her eyes.

No stirring. No coming-to. Just right into lucidity, like she'd been kicked. She feels like she's been kicked. It takes a few moments to for her eyes to adjust to the light. She remembers fighting.. and fire? Explosions?

She tries to sit up, and finds she's able to. She's been dressed in a thin white jumpsuit that ends at the elbows and knees. Her wrists are bound together with aluminum cuffs, but otherwise she's unrestrained. It looks like she's in some sort of cell, judging by the cold metal and the cold lights.

A figure walks into the light from the far wall towards her, looking at her with a single judgemental eye.

"You're awakened. I trust you can walk."

Kaladin doesn't recognize him. Tall, with messy platinum blonde-black hair, blue eyes, dressed in an elegant white outfit reminiscent of a uniform. A prosthetic made of sleek black metal makes up his right leg, and he wears a black mask that covers the right half of his face and his mouth.

Kaladin shoots him a hostile glare.

"Silence is perfectly acceptable. But it will not help you here. You are in the heart of our empire, now. Come along."

Reluctantly, Kaladin follows behind him, her vision blurring for a moment as she stands up. It doesn't look like she has any other choice, and she has to see where this goes.. she has to see if the king is here. Thankfully, or maybe unfortunately, she's joined by Laral, dressed in identical clothing and identical shackles. Neither of their shardsabers are anywhere in sight. She and Kaladin share a dangerous, worried glance.

"I know what you are thinking. You wonder what we hope to achieve by taking you prisoner. Well, I have questions. And you will provide the answers."

"We will tell you nothing," Laral snaps. Her black hair is streaked with bright blue, since she likes to dye the blonde inside. The gesture seems somewhat childish to Kaladin now, but Laral has always been more than she appears.

"You won't have to speak to give me the answers I need."

Laral's brow furrows, the way it does when she gets frustrated. Kaladin focuses more on their surroundings. Clean metal hallways.. in a ship, probably. A big one. They enter a very long hall, lined with with transparisteel windows, exposing the stars outside. On either side of the hall stands lines of soldiers in identical golden armor, standing at attention, each carrying a tall shield and polesabers with humming blue blades.

"The destruction of our safehouse on Thalath. That was you. The mark — "

"Yes." He turns back to eye the two of them. "We recovered your ship's records. Fascinating reading. A life spent on the run is rarely well-enjoyed, is it not?"

"You're strongly Connected," Kaladin says suddenly. Laral gives her a dangerous glance.

"I suspect we have more than that in common."

A lean man dressed in robes of gold, black, and white strides up to their captor. He has tan skin, and ragged hair and a beard that's strangely incongruous with his fine outfit.

"Prince Adolin."

"Zahel. Still waiting for the catastrophe your Scions foretold?"

"You can close your ears to the whispers of fate, my prince, but they cannot be silenced."

"Enough." Adolin glances back at Kaladin and Laral. Kaladin watches them both with a suspicious eye; maybe she could surprise one of the guards, take their weapon.. but that would only get both her and Laral killed. Plus the aluminum cuffs. She looks over and can tell Laral is thinking much of the same thing, and Kaladin shakes her head very subtly.

"You're taking us to your master," Laral says.

"I'm taking you to my father," Adolin corrects. "Gavilar. The Immortal Emperor of Zakuul."

The emperor?

"Just what we were looking for," Laral whispers.

"You will not find what you wanted here," Adolin says.

He throws open the massive doors at the end of the hall, leading into a large throne room. Ten more soldiers in armor line the path. The throne itself is on a raised dais, and the walls of the throne room as well as the sides of the room to the sides of the main path are transparisteel, revealing the vastness of space beyond.

"His Glorious Majesty, Immortal Master and Protector of Zakuul: Emperor Gavilar," the prince announces. Two knights cross sabers to stop Kaladin and Laral from walking any further forward, but Adolin steps up to the throne and goes on one knee before the emperor.

The Emperor himself is an elegant man, dressed in luxurious white/gold/black armored robes and a small circlet for a crown. His skin is tan, and he wears long hair tied in a bun and secured with hair spikes, paired with a short beard, streaked black and light gray. His eyes are a light, ethereal green, and his face shows neither displeasure nor delight at the sight of Kaladin and Laral.

Standing beside the throne, on one level of the dais lower than the throne itself, stands another young man, with black hair, yellow eyes, and a prominent nose, wearing armor of a different design than Adolin's. On the other side of the throne sits a woman in similarly ornate clothing, although with less decoration, with vicious purple eyes. Some sort of mask covers her lower face, and a chain connects a metal collar to the base of the throne. She snarls at Kaladin.

"Welcome," the Emperor says, standing.

"You," Laral hisses. Kaladin feels it too. He looks different, but this is the king of Alethela.

"Me," he responds coolly, taking a moment before speaking again. "Elhokar, you are dismissed. Take your sister, will you? Ensure she doesn't destroy anything she isn't meant to."

Elhokar frowns, but doesn't respond. He takes the end of the chain from the throne gingerly, like he's afraid Jasnah might rip his face off if he provokes her, and leads her out of the throne room, shooting a hostile glance at the prisoners. Kaladin is unable to keep herself from jumping as Jasnah growls at her, taking another pull of the chain to convince her to follow.

Kaladin shares another look with Laral. She looks scared. And pissed. Adolin takes a stance on one knee, this time facing towards both of them, watching quietly.

"Do these people have any idea who you really are?" Kaladin asks. "The kinds of things you're capable of?"

"Do you?"

"From a warmonger to a tyrant," Laral spits. "You'd burn us all like you did Rathalas."

Gavilar mmms. "Rathalas was an example. Nobody truly cares about that hunk of rock. A moon in an out-of-the-way system. Oh, the people will moan.. but atrocities are easily forgotten."

"Storm you."

The Emperor smiles. "You claim to have come all this way to find me. The ways you hid yourselves were at times ingenious, I will admit. But the mink cannot hide from the whitespine forever. And so, here I am. What is it that you want so badly?"

Kaladin finds herself hating him. Even moreso than when he ruled over Alethela, than when she was conscripted, than when she was forced to run. He smiles like he knows everything. Laral feels it too, judging by her gritted teeth.

"To kill you," Laral hisses. "Your destruction. Once and for all."

Gavilar smiles again. It seems so conceited, so self-aggrandizing. Like he knows nobody can actually stop him. The prince certainly isn't trying. He kneels wordlessly.

"You claim to know me. If you really do, then you should know the depths of my power. Whatever you hoped to achieve here, you should know that you cannot succeed," he says. "But you do not have to stand against me. Instead… you can kneel."

Laral stands up straighter, as if trying to do the opposite of what he's suggesting. "No. I will never again kneel to you."

"You would honestly rather die than acknowledge my superiority?"

"It is you who fears death, so-called 'Emperor'. I do not. I will not kneel."

It happens very quickly. Laral slices her cuffs in two with the open blade of a nearby knight, then backhands him and wrenches the polesaber away. She enters Flamestance, parrying a strike and stabbing through the heart of a second knight, bringing the blade around to behead a third, her step unnaturally quick. Kaladin considers how best to help her — but before she gets the opportunity, Laral points the polesaber towards the Emperor, and the Emperor responds by lazily raising a hand.

Radiant white energy illuminates the chamber, hitting Laral square in the chest. She collapses backwards, the polesaber's safety mechanism un-igniting its blade, her chest smoking. Kaladin expects to feel something — anger, despair, some sort of emotion. Instead, she feels numb. It's not pleasant, and Kaladin recognizes she should be having a stronger reaction, but this is just how she gets sometimes.

"Leave us," the Emperor commands. The remaining knights drag their friends' corpses out of the throne room and depart, leaving Laral there, dead on the floor.

"You've already killed more people than I can count," Kaladin says. "Is one more really supposed to hurt?"

It should. Maybe it would, in other circumstances. Maybe it will.

"No. You are different." The Emperor begins to walk down the layered dais, arms to his sides. "You alone have merited my full attention. So young for one so powerful. But hopefully not irrational.

"Look around you. Zakuul is poised to become the greatest civilization in the history of the cosmere. I forged this empire to surmount all of my previous works. To span eternity.

"The Eternal Throne commands a fleet more vast than any ever built. I have the power to reshape the cosmere into any image that I choose. That we choose. I will share all of this with you.. if only you will kneel."

Kaladin looks up at him, his breastplate glimmering, his cape cleanly pressed. Of course he irons his capes.. and of course Kaladin can't focus on the right things. She looks at him with her coolest possible gaze.

"'Share'?" she asks. "You don't 'share' anything. I know what you've done. You enslave. You devour. I will never be a part of that."

The Emperor smiles, but Kaladin can tell he's slightly frustrated, unless that's only her imagination. "So be it." He turns away.

Adolin steps up to her, clutching something concealed. He ignites his own shardsaber, humming bright blue. Kaladin looks at him, expecting to be cut down right here. Adolin's gaze isn't on her, however, not specifically, and he seems to muster his resolve —

— and then he slices apart Kaladin's cuffs, pressing the Sylsaber into her hand. "You came here to kill him," Adolin hisses. "This is your chance!"

And then Adolin Lashes himself towards his father, his shardsaber held aloft.. as his strike is parried almost lazily by some unseen force. Gavilar simply raises his hand, and it's like he's hitting an invisible wall. For a moment, Kaladin is too stunned to act.

"First your brother, now your father?" the Emperor asks.

"Does my ambition truly surprise you?" Adolin snaps, his strikes reflected easily, even in Windstance.

"No. You have no ambition. Only jealousy. That is why you fail."

Kaladin ignites the Sylsaber, humming to cyan life. It's almost pitifully easy; he must have let down his guard while defending himself against Adolin. With a determined step, she thrusts through the Emperor's chest, right over his heart, the Sylsaber taking a moment to burn through the front breastplate.

Gavilar smiles. Like he's still in control. "So be it." He collapses forward, then.. dissolves into mist. Gone in an instant. Kaladin is left standing there, stunned — and she's too distracted to stop Elhokar from pinning her to the floor, knocking the Sylsaber away, holding his own shardsaber to her throat, having returned. Kaladin doesn't struggle. She doesn't want her skin to accidentally touch the blade.. and moreover, she.. won?

It certainly doesn't feel like winning. Especially as the knights drag her away, alongside Laral's smoking corpse. Kaladin doesn't protest. The last thing she sees is Elhokar himself sitting on the throne, looking around, looking less triumphant than distracted and displeased.

Chapter 2: A Dream of Empire

Summary:

Kaladin is dying.

Notes:

<3

With your birth comes a solemn vow: you will have nothing. Your privilege is the dirt.

 

Kaladin feels herself drifting. Far from lucid. Somewhere very, very cold. For a moment, she's alive. For a moment, she's dead. For a moment, she's back home, and in the next, she hasn't been there in years.

A brightness washes over her, drenching her with its force, shocking her back to awareness. To her own body. Standing somewhere.

"I have always loved the stars."

Kaladin looks to find none other than the Emperor standing next to her, gazing upward. She glances upward as well, to see the full night sky, just as she remembers it from her home planet.

"Maybe I'll drop you into one of them sometime," Kaladin mumbles. "See if that finishes you off."

"You would not be the first to try," Gavilar responds, amused. "But you could be the first to succeed."

Kaladin looks at him. "I thought you died on Alethela. But you're not the same person, are you?"

"Everything changes. You most of all."

Kaladin looks around. A vagueness of color, most detailed in the spot they're standing in, a rocky outcropping with features reminiscent to Kaladin's home. Long grass waving in the wind. "What is this? Was I executed?"

Gavilar smiles. At that moment, a sharp, stabbing pain burns through Kaladin, freezing and burning everything at the same time. She cries out, falling to her hands and knees, until it starts to lessen.

"The carbonite freezing was imperfect. Your body is poisoned. Dying. I will help."

"And if I don't want your storming help?"

Gavilar smiles. "The cosmere changes, and we must change with it. Welcome to the Spiritual Realm — the place where all things, times, and places become one. Allow me to show you a few things."

He gestures, and in the distance Kaladin can see five figures in the distance. Fighting. Dying. Her attention focuses on them.

"Your 'friends'. They cling to you like extra shackles. You gave their lives purpose.

"There's the vengeful fool."

Moash, in her leather jacket, face twisted in anger. She'd moved beyond her issues, hadn't she?

"The hopeless addict."

Teft scowling, his shardspear pointed forward, humming with green energy.

"The corrupt reprobate."

Venli, face twisted in anger, her robes stained in blood. Hungry for power, yes, but hardly corrupt.

"The naive monster."

Szeth, his saber held out before him. No longer afraid of what he once was.

"And the boorish urchin."

Lift crying out as she's stabbed in the side. Well, that's not her fault. Her talent doesn't lie in fighting.

"You have suffered their existence long enough. You don't need them. You never did."

"No. Of course I need them. No matter how powerful I am, I'm still greater if I have allies," Kaladin says, watching them fighting. Dying.

"Yours already forget you," Gavilar says, like a reminder.

"No. No. I won't accept that."

Gavilar shrugs, an odd gesture for someone with such a regal bearing and outfit. The path towards Kaladin's companions materializes — a shallow valley lined with wreckage and smoke.

"Each day, they drift further out of reach. Without a core.. without us.. the cosmere and all within it will spiral into chaos."

Kaladin starts running towards them, hearing Gavilar laugh behind her. Skytroopers — the droid soldiers the Eternal Empire uses — form out of light, beeping incessantly. Kaladin finds the Sylsaber by her side, and ignites it — quickly shearing one vertically down the spine. Skytroopers are hard to kill thanks to their design, having cameras on all parts of their bodies for visual input and isolated mechanics and operations systems that lets them continue functioning even if their body is in two or more pieces. Or so Kaladin has heard Sigzil say about a million times by now. But their central processing unit sits in their spine, and they can be mostly removed from service by severing it, easiest with a shardsaber, or sufficiently crushing their innards.

Kaladin deflects two blaster bolts with a quick flourish and Lashes a chunk of broken starship down, falling with a crunch on the other two skytroopers; it would have taken too much energy to crush them with the Lashing itself, although Kaladin has done it before. It's easiest when touching them, but it's dangerous to be that close, so instead she can use the environment against them. She continues forward.

The landscape shifts. The air fills with smoke. The sounds of war surround Kaladin; people screaming, bleeding, dying. They're not real.

"Aren't they? Weren't they?" Gavilar's voice comes.

Kaladin grits her teeth, navigating carefully over a field of debris, quickly hacking another skytrooper apart. She has to get to her friends. She quickly stumbles down a steep hill into a clearing, where a riven starfighter sits smoking. The acrid scent of the chemicals and fuel and metal isn't unfamiliar to Kaladin. Facing him are two figures, forming from light. A figure in traditional, antiquated black armor, with shifting red light coming out from under the cracks. And a shorter man, pale, with a long beard, in blue robes. Ulim and Pozen.

They move into action immediately. Ulim with his weapon, not quite a shardsaber but a more traditional sword, glowing red, in Bloodstance. It had almost killed Kaladin once before, and is the reason for the twisting scar on Venli's face. Pozen's saber is slightly longer than usual, colored bright blue, buzzing unpleasantly. Not a calming hum. He stands in Lightstance, meant to be fierce but quick and adaptable.

Kaladin Lashes herself backwards, dancing out of Ulim's reach. He hums a hostile tone, resetting his stance, thrusting forward, his blade sparking against the Sylsaber. It's not like dueling someone with another saber; each hit is volatile, cracking loudly as their energies oppose each other, Kaladin in twisting Smokestance. Kaladin twists out of the way of Pozen's thrust, no longer on the offensive but barely able to keep herself from being hit.

Kaladin then Lashes herself upwards, stabbing downwards, hissing against Ulim's armor. Pozen thrusts up calmly, clipping Kaladin's right leg, leaving her baggy trouser and the flesh beneath smoking. Kaladin's hand tenses up for a moment, her headache returning, and when she lands she parries Pozen's next strike sloppily, nearly hitting Kaladin's hand.

"You have ruined my disciple," Pozen says. Angry, but in a somehow calm way, which only makes it more infuriating. "Szeth could have been so much more. And what have you done to him?"

"He's not a weapon," Kaladin snaps.

"We are all weapons," Pozen replies, "and it would seem some of us are sharper than others."

"He's right," Gavilar's voice says in Kaladin's mind. "And wrong."

Pozen comes at Kaladin again. His saber is longer, and he knows how to aim for the hands, so Kaladin's game is one of keep-away. She'd only defeated Pozen with Szeth's help, once before, and now she's alone and outnumbered. Ulim throws his sword at her, and she barely manages to pull her legs back in time; not that it particularly matters, since Ulim just re-summons it. His was like a living shardsaber, almost.

Kaladin slips into Vinestance, batting away Pozen's strikes, nearly tripping on a discarded chunk of fuselage. Ulim comes at her from the side, and so Kaladin performs a manuever that would be impossible if he had a regular saber — grabbing his blade by the hilt and wrenching it towards herself, the hooks on it preventing her hand from slipping and cutting her skin. While she touches the metal, it reverberates unpleasantly against Kaladin's body, and leaves her hand stinging.

Ulim holds on, his grip like steel, so Kaladin Lashes it directly away from her. The blade is Invested, and won't hold the power for long, but it's enough to give Kaladin some breathing room to figure out a way to deal with Pozen.

She deflects a thrust, and then enters Bloodstance for a moment, bringing the Sylsaber down on Pozen's head. He raises his own saber up to block, but Kaladin deactives and then re-ignites the Sylsaber to get around his blade — a risky manuever, as it leaves one's hand exposed, and can be countered if your opponent is expecting it — but it seems to work, Pozen stumbling back as the blade hisses against the side of his head. Kaladin follows through, severing Pozen's right arm, leaving him too disoriented to block the strike that cuts his upper body in two.

Kaladin huffs, immediately spinning around to bat aside a blow from Ulim. That shouldn't have worked against Pozen, but maybe these recreations aren't entirely accurate. They both enter Smokestance, Kaladin advancing, whipping their blades against each other in a frantic rhythm, finally catching both weapons in a lock, Kaladin's body trembling against the discordant tone.

"I realize my mistake," Ulim hisses. "Venli was never strong enough to do what needed to be done."

"You never actually cared about her," Kaladin snarls.

"She was a pawn. And a useful one. But she's not Kaladin Stormblessed, is she?"

Kaladin scowls. Ulim whips his blade around to come at her from the side, and Kaladin ducks forward to shove her saber through a crack in Ulim's armor, catching his sword with her hand again to drive the Sylsaber upwards, towards the heart. Something hard sizzles from within, and Ulim falls still, the light from inside quickly fading.

Kaladin drops to her knees, exhausted, another wave of pain washing over her. Gavilar laughs, clapping slowly, but he says nothing, and Kaladin forces herself to her feet again to keep moving forward.

She trudges up into the field where her friends were fighting. Familiar brown rock, stained deeply with red and orange blood. Kaladin looks down wordlessly at Moash, speared through the chest with a thick spear.

"Too late, again," Gavilar says, appearing before Kaladin. "That was quite a show. But you failed. Again."

"So what?" Kaladin is angry now. "If the point is that I'm bad at everything, what's with all the shit about me being special?"

"You are special. These cremlings are not. Come and see."

Kaladin forces herself to walk past the bodies, up to the end of the path. The stone beneath her hangs unsuspended in some great, dark void, the sky above still glimmering with constellations. She steps up to the very ledge, and the grand city of Kholinar forms out of light across a wide gap.

"My failed Empire. You never belonged. You were always superior to the murderous fools in charge here."

"Then why are we here? What's the point of wallowing in the consequences of your poor decision-making?"

"To prove a point," Gavilar says, gesturing towards the city. "The Bright Council.. Imperial Intelligence.. the Oldbloods.. they all fail. Mired in endless bickering or bureaucracy or petty grudges. You alone find victory."

"Right. And now I'm stuck in carbonite, dying of poison, and talking to you. It's almost like I can't stop winning."

Gavilar doesn't laugh, like Kaladin expected he would have. "A worm enters a chrysalis to grow wings. It never crawls again. And it never looks back." He pauses for a moment. "I am not your enemy. I will help you see. Alethela is not worth saving; there is a greater purpose for us."

"You mean Zakuul." Kaladin turns her head to glare at him. "Let me guess. You want your Throne back."

Gavilar smiles. "You are above the life of a sellsaber. You are above even the lives of what flawed beings my Empire produced. Roshone, Ruthar, Sadeas.. they could never be what you are. I will help you see."

Very abruptly, there's a flash of light, and Kaladin is standing on Kholinar's streets. Somewhere she doesn't exactly recognize, but Kholinar is a big city. Three soldiers clad in blue armor and clutching blaster rifles point their weapons at Kaladin. She raises her hands in surrender, but they shoot at her anyway, and she's forced to deflect the bolts with her Sylsaber.

"Traitor!" one shouts. "Storming traitor!" His voice sounds vaguely familiar, but Kaladin can't bring to mind what it reminds her of.

"You abandoned us," another yells.

They're not real, Kaladin tells herself. But it still hurts to have to kill them, easily slicing them apart with the Sylsaber, leaving blood on the ground and plastisteel smoking.

She looks forward. There aren't many options for her path, considering how much of the city has been destroyed. Buildings smashed, huge piles of rubble strewn around. Kaladin gingerly makes her way forward, occasionally being brought to her knees by the pain. It hurts her heart to kill these soldiers, though. They're just people with lives and families, doing what they've been told..

They're not real. Right?

She spots a speeder platform and decides to make her way there, since it seems relatively intact. On the way, though, she meets other Radiants — the martial order Kaladin herself had been in, once. She eventually left, but of course she still cares about the people there.

They shout hostile words at her, like the soldiers did. Kaladin doesn't recognize them specifically, but they seem like padawans, unpracticed, easy enough to dispatch. Kaladin doesn't want to kill them, but they're in her way, and whatever this place is, she needs to survive it. They're just manipulations created by Gavilar to torment her, she tells herself.

She trudges up the slope to the speeder platform, finding a functional taxi, its droid driver rotating its head from time to time but otherwise unresponsive. Kaladin climbs into the side car, letting it drive her across another gap, this time to the vast entrance grounds of the Kholinar Citadel. The pain washes over her as she tries to get out of the taxi, making it harder than usual, and she collapses to the ground. The droid beeps and immediately fades away into light, leaving Kaladin alone.

She staggers to her feet, gazing upward at the gates. She remembers being young and staring upward, feeling absolutely dwarfed. The feeling isn't so different now.

Materializing from light is a lone, tall figure holding a shardsaber. Knight Amaram, in his traditional Radiant robes. Kaladin had idolized him, at one point, but soon enough his rotten heart had been revealed.

He says nothing, but the look upon his face is one of grim determination as he ignites his dark pink shardsaber. It makes Kaladin angry. How dare he make himself seem like there's anything noble about him? Without a word from either of them, they leap into action, Kaladin into Flamestance, Amaram into Oilstance, a more unconventional style that focuses on attacking from odd angles.

Their sabers spark against each other as Kaladin advances with a certain step, striking with perhaps more force than necessary. She bats away a low strike, then thrusts forward, sidestepped by Amaram. His saber blade warbles and crackles slightly, the gemstone inside flawed; he'd always claimed it made no difference, despite what a sabersmith might say about a faulty blade.

In terms of raw skill, Kaladin can win. She strikes him with a flurry of blows, the air smelling of smoke. Her grip weakens for a moment, and Kaladin grits her teeth, hammering away at Amaram's guard. The first one to make a mistake would be the loser — and a slightly misplaced guard makes it difficult to reorient, allowing Kaladin to clip the left side of his face. He Lashes himself backward, but at the same time Kaladin Lashes herself forward, sailing past him and ripping open his side, then abruptly stopping to turn, spearing him through the chest.

Amaram collapses immediately, and begins to fade. Gavilar stands there, eyebrows raised.

"The corrupted patriot," he says. "One of the best Radiants the Empire ever produced — and still so deeply flawed. And no match for you."

"This is getting tedious," Kaladin responds. "That wasn't the real Amaram. He wouldn't have made that mistake."

"Wouldn't he? Didn't he? You have always been more than him. You must see beyond your limited perception. I seek only to open your eyes."

The scene changes again. Instead of the entrance to the Citadel, Kaladin stands indoor somewhere.. a large room with a throne. Not the Eternal Emperor's throne, but the King of Alethela's throne. A hall, richly ornamented, its deep blue carpets now stained with blood. And Kaladin is back there, on that day.

With hands she holds to her sides to keep from trembling, she inspects the frozen scene. The King, raising his hands as they crackle with dark energy. Kaladin herself, younger, sitting on the floor, cradling a woman in her hands. Syl. Through their bond, the Connection dyad, Kaladin had been able to manifest a shardsaber, and its form became cemented into its shape when.. when Syl..

Others were here. Szeth. Moash. But their forms are vague, fuzzy. Only Syl really matters. Kaladin looks down at her former self, numb.

"You didn't need her, either," Gavilar says.

"Of course I needed her," Kaladin responds quietly, though it sounds unconvincing even to herself.

"She was another tool. Another weapon. Now, she is no longer a distraction as well."

Kaladin shuts her eyes and turns away. Then she notices something. A rip. This place is built from memories, Gavilar had said.

"You are no longer bound by oaths," he continues, and Kaladin reaches out for the tear. "The future is — "

Everything goes white.

Kaladin blinks. She's somewhere desolate, craggy. The landscape lacks definition. A circle of nine other people stands solemnly, Kaladin taking one of their places, shardsabers laid out on the ground before them. They talk quietly, and Kaladin looks around. None are people he recognize.

"And what should we do, Jezrien? We can't resist him. All of us.. we.."

Kaladin looks towards the man beside her. Relatively short, with thinning hair, vaguely Alethi. His expression is that of deep concern, worry, fear. But then it changes.

"Wait," he says, grabbing Kaladin's arm. "It's you."

"Uh—?"

"Please," he pleads, his face genuinely sorrowful. "You can resist him. You can defeat him. He is not omnipotent, much as he would like us to believe.."

"I.. what? Who are you?"

"Please," the man begs again, and then everything goes white.

" — yours to decide. So what will it be?"

Kaladin looks back at him. "I'm not afraid." Then, she cries out as the pain returns, sending her to the floor, her lungs aflame. She gasps for breath as Gavilar looks down at her, smiling condescendingly.

"Allow me to show you something." He waves his hand, and Kaladin is there.

The air fills with the unmistakable, unforgettable scent of smoke and burning flesh. The sound of screaming. People in pain. Kaladin whimpers, but forces herself to get up off the ground anyway.

The world is gray, desolate, no plant life in sight. Black smoke and a red haze pollutes the sky, flames visible on the horizon. The path before her is wide, with an endless pit to one side and a high rock formation to the other. Kaladin starts trudging forward.

"Rathalas," Gavilar says. "The world where everything changed. For me, for you.. for the cosmere."

"You killed every living being here."

"They died opening my eyes to the truth. I have passed beyond death's reach."

"Everything dies," Kaladin hisses. "Even you."

"Well, firstly, I recall multiple failed attempts. And second.. our flesh is not who we are. Voices.. Hands.. Children. I no longer require those crude vessels. At long last, I am truly free."

"You choose to torment me. Why?"

"Our story is not finished," he says, one hand on his breastplate. "I have done all I can to preserve your life."

"Why?"

"You are a part of me I wish to keep."

Kaladin looks up as a forlorn, oversized figure tears itself from the rock, with irregular proportions matching no living creature and hateful red eyes. She Lashes herself upward, the Sylsaber hissing through solid rock as she digs into the creature's back, eventually severing its spine, and it crashes down to earth.

"The thunderclasts. A fascinating form of life. Or, perhaps, unlife. They are the only thing that moves on Rathalas, now."

Kaladin is exhausted. Her body hurts, and won't stop hurting. The path gets much steeper, and she's forced to haul herself up the jagged, rocky steps. The screams don't get any quieter.

"There are important lessons in this."

Kaladin gasps for breath, stumbling to her feet. In front of her is the rubble of a ruined chunk of city. She walks through it, occasionally heaving up a chunk of broken stone in the hopes that some of the screams may be coming from someone still living, but of course there's nothing. Except once, where unless it was Kaladin's imagination, she sees a brief glimpse of a single yellow eye in the firelight. It is gone in an instant.

She walks into a large clearing. From the center, another thunderclast rips itself out of the ground, much larger than the one from earlier; hunched over, with large spikes on its back, and an axehound-like head. It leers down at Kaladin with an unmistakable hostility.

"I cannot save you unless you want to live," Gavilar says from beside her.

"I'll decide my fate. Not you."

Gavilar smiles. "Then show me."

The thunderclast roars. Kaladin Lashes herself forward, depending more on it than on her actual legs for movement, slicing in half one of the thunderclast's feet. It trumps in anger, stomping its feet, but Kaladin is already out of range. When it swipes at Kaladin with one of its massive hands, she expertly leaps over it, taking off two of its fingers by stabbing down with the Sylsaber. She Lashes herself forward again to cut its leg again, intentionally slicing it at a jagged angle to make it difficult to balance on.

The thunderclast raises its hand to hit Kaladin mid-air, but she twists out of the way and takes its hand off at the wrist, then digs the Sylsaber into its neck, the blade easily cutting through the rock, leaving it bright and smoldering. The thunderclast roars again, but Kaladin shoves her hand into a cut in its back and activates Division — something she's very hesitant to do normally, but this isn't a question of precision. The stone ignites, the sound of the fire crackling only a small part of the endless flaming choir of the scouring.

The thunderclast collapses to the ground, and Kaladin doesn't try to steady herself as she's thrown to the ground, her body flaring up with pain.

"You are the only one who has ever matched my will to survive," Gavilar says.

"Stop comparing yourself to me," she mumbles, lying on the ground face-up. "We're nothing alike."

"You resist the inevitable. It is time you faced reality."

The world goes white.

When Kaladin opens her eyes next, she's standing in the Eternal Throne room next to Gavilar, feeling only marginally better. Elhokar sits in the throne, a simple circlet on his head, and Jasnah sits on the steps to the dais, scowling behind her odd mask.

"The Eternal Throne," Gavilar says, gesturing forward. "The new seat of power in the cosmere."

Kaladin turns towards him. "But I've only been gone — "

"Longer than you think. Zakuul has passed my expectations. The most powerful fleet in history, and an army of loyal guardians who know that power is more than just honor or passion. But my children.. my children abuse their power."

"Their mother isn't around to keep them in line?"

"I made a mistake," Gavilar says. "I let her go."

"Yeah. Husband of the year award, I bet."

Gavilar eyes her. "We must deal with my errant children before they ruin everything."

"So that's why you're with me? I knew you wanted something. You can't stop them alone."

"They are deadly. And worse, lack discipline — Elhokar is incompetent, Jasnah is insane, and Adolin.."

Kaladin looks to where Adolin stands at attention beside the throne, his eyes smoldering with some unreadable emotion.

"So what? I just kill them?"

"It is hardly a matter of 'just'. Do not underestimate them. It will take the both of us to undo the damage they can inflict."

Kaladin stares at him flatly, then turns her attention back to them. She's startled when she realizes Jasnah has focused her violet eyes directly on her.

"Your daughter sees me," she notes.

Gavilar sniffs. "Jasnah never was my favorite."

"What is it?" Elhokar asks, leaning forward.

Jasnah shoots him a glance, then turns her attention back to Kaladin. Odd. Why doesn't she speak?

Jasnah suddenly growls, clawing at Kaladin with one hand. The vision collapses, sending Kaladin someplace vague and bright and painful, making it difficult to focus on anything but how much it hurts.

"I'm dying," she whispers.

"We are being reborn," Gavilar corrects.

In the far distance, a voice.

"Kal? Kal, wake up. We have to go.."