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Chapter Text

“Don’t worry,” Kaladin whispered. When had he started to cry? “I’ll bring you home. I’ll protect you, Tien. I’ll bring you back…”

He held the body into the evening, long past the end of the battle, clinging to it as it slowly grew cold.

———

AGAIN

Kaladin eyes flew open, and he nearly tripped over a corpse.

Blood, that should have filled ruddy cheeks, that should have kept his brother smiling and vibrant and alive , instead spilled upon the rocks that Tien had so loved. Blood, that covered Kaladin’s limp hands. Tears, falling, unable to wash away the blood, only creating little eddies and torrents that distorted the inexorable advance of red.

But it wasn’t Tien. Kaladin looked down, and saw a soldier in orange. He was in a hollow of rock, but it wasn’t the hollow where—

Where—

Kaladin cringed back against the rock. Tien’s loss left a haze on his mind, a weeping grayness that seemed to dampen the world around him.

But the battle had ended. Why was there a battle still? Was he dreaming? Was it the next battle? He didn’t remember leaving the corpse. He should have remembered doing that, right?

Kaladin’s thoughts threatened to choke him as he pressed against the stone so hard it dug bruises into his back. Assess the situation first. His father’s voice. Kaladin forced himself to look back at the battlefield. He was on an incline, and Amaram’s army was surrounded atop the steep hill. Amaram’s banner still flew at the top, and—

And he’d been here before.

Before Tien…

Before…

Kaladin took off at a run up the side of the hill, reckless in his haste.

Could it be?

Did it matter?

He all but plowed into Amaram’s line, and soldiers cursed as they stepped aside.

“Which squad are you from, soldier?” Said a stocky lighteyed man with the knots of a low captain.

The stocky lighteyed man.

“Dead, sir,” Kaladin said, his hope a wary rockbud seeking rain in a withered landscape. “All dead. We were in Brightlord Tashlin’s company, and—”

“Bah,” the man said, turning to a runner. “Third report we’ve had that Tashlin is down. Somebody warn Amaram. East side is weakening by—”

That was all Kaladin needed to hear.

He didn’t understand.

But he didn’t need to.

Tien!

A windspren danced alongside him as he dashed down the southeast side of the hill, stirring Sheler’s banner in a light breeze.

Kaladin made straight for Varth’s squad. The enemy hadn’t reached them yet. Kaladin would make it this time. He would.

“Tien!” Kaladin yelled as he neared.

The boy looked toward him, eyes opening wide. He smiled just as Kaladin skidded in front of him. A fraction of a second later, the enemy line hit. Suddenly Kaladin was looking into his own terrified face, reflected in a lighteyes’ steel breastplate as his sword cleaved downwards and Kaladin’s spear clattered limply to the stones.

Tien’s smile morphed into a wordless scream as fire erupted in Kaladin’s chest and his heartbeat thumped wetly against steel.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Four heartbeats.

His heart? …H emorrhaging, caused by rupture of multiple organs. Prepare for immediate surgery.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Seven heartbeats.

…No. Hooves. Cavalry.

Thump. Thump. Nine heartbeats.

Tien’s horrified face. I’ll protect you…Don’t cry, Tien. Laugh…

Thump. Ten heartbeats.

Silence.

———

AGAIN

Kaladin clutched at his chest as he struggled to stand up in the stone hollow. Storms, he could still feel the blade sliding in, scraping against his ribs, impaling his heart.

Before him lay a corpse in orange. Kaladin gritted his teeth.

No time for weakness.

He stepped out of the hollow, and saw a shield lying five feet to his left. He dashed that way, but was brought up short by a squad of orange-clad men. They turned and closed in on him. Panicked, agonized, Kaladin leveled his spear at them and charged blindly forward. His spear seemed to move of its own accord, a breeze cooling Kaladin’s sweaty brow as he ducked one blow, whipped up the butt of his spear to smack another man in the face, and spun past the lunge of the third man. The fourth soldier moved to block, but his boot caught on a pebble and he stumbled to the side. 

The fifth man took Kaladin in the leg.

Not again! Kaladin screamed in frustration as he collapsed to the ground not ten feet from where he had started. He clenched his jaw, struggling to stand.

He looked down numbly as a spear tip burst from his abdomen.

———

AGAIN

Sergeant Dalar clamped his hand down on Kaladin’s arm mid-sprint. “Oh no boy, you don’t go running off now. Squad reassignment is in that direction—”

He melted into nothingness as the enemy closed in on the southeast side of the hill and snuffed out Kaladin’s light.

———

AGAIN

Squadleader Mesh’s team scattered, and a shape loomed over Kaladin, fuzzy through his tears. Have to…get to…Tien… Sensing Kaladin’s confusion, the enemy aimed straight for Kaladin’s neck instead of his leg.

Kaladin brought up his spear a second too late.

———

AGAIN

Kaladin groaned and sagged against the wall of the rock hollow. Five times. Five failures.

Why is this happening to me? What is happening to me? To relive death…

A streak of blue-white light zipping by his face shocked him alert, and the battlefield reasserted itself in reality. Kaladin squeezed his eyes shut, struggling against the hollow numbness. Teeth gritted, he charged out, back into the fray. I don’t care. So long as there is a chance that Tien lives…

Kaladin slipped on a patch of blood. He raised his head just in time to see his brother collapse.

———

AGAIN

“Kaladin.”

Kaladin whirled. There, in front of his face, hung the small, blue-white figure of a young woman. A windspren. She cocked her head at him. “You keep leaving this hollow for another hollow. Is there something nicer about the other hollow?”

Kaladin’s eyes went wide. A spren had just spoken to him. Had it spoken his name?

I must be going insane. That, or this is revenge for asking about dungspren.

———

AGAIN

Kaladin darted around the enemy squad, leaping a clump of rockbuds. Next to him, somehow keeping pace despite her delicate strides, the spren giggled. “You’re getting faster!”

Panting, Kaladin glanced at her. “What is this, spirit? Did you cause this?”

Then he tripped over a stumpweight tree, butted heads with an boulder, and everything went black.

———

AGAIN

The spren shook her translucent head. “No. I don’t think so.”

Kaladin grunted as he leveled his spear at the squad of orange-clad soldiers. Watch for the fifth soldier. He would learn. He would become a master of the spear, if that was what was needed to save Tien.

The flurry of blue-white leaves spinning around him groaned. “This is all sooooo confusing! The same things keep happening! And here I thought spren were boring!”

Kaladin wasn’t prepared for the seventh man.

———

AGAIN

Forget the shield. Kaladin clenched his jaw as he ran, ignoring the phantom pain in his left lung where he had last been stabbed. In fact, it seemed that he was no longer able to unclench his jaw. “Do you have a name, spirit?”

He went crosseyed as the windspren zipped up into his face, and he narrowly avoided knocking Squadleader Mesh flat.

“A name,” she repeated. “Sylphrena.”

“That’s a pretty name,” he said. Sylphrena laughed gleefully, reminding him of Tien. Don’t you dare think of him that way! He’s not dead yet, you can save him, you have to—

“Syl,” she said. “That’s amusing. It appears that I have a nickname.”

Kaladin barely heard her. “Varth, stop!” He screamed. The squadleader turned from where he was pushing Tien to the front of the formation.

Sensing weakness, the enemy line struck Varth’s squad early.

“Tien, no!”

Blackness.

———

AGAIN

“Who’s Tien?” Syl asked.

Kaladin tripped the seventh soldier and hefted his shield. “My brother. I have to protect him-”

“From what?”

“Death.” Kaladin whispered, voice ragged.

“What’s wrong with death?”

Kaladin ignored the exhaustionspren puffing up in his wake. Faster!

“Death means the ending of life. A life resolved, its accomplishments and regrets soulcast into stone. A hole in the world where love once flowed.”

“But you’ve already died, and you’re still here!”

Kaladin let out a broken laugh. It sounded vaguely hysterical.

Ten times. Ten deaths, either Tien’s or mine.

A slow death I die. A soul fracturing and dying splinter by splinter.

The shield rang a clear note as the steel sword bounced off it. The sword that had impaled Tien the first time and Kaladin the second. The armored lighteyes paused, and Kaladin held his brother close as he dove to the side.

I’ll protect Tien this time, I’ll—

Amaram’s cavalry swept outward. They spared neither thought nor concern for the two young soldiers huddling in their path.

Hooves thundered all around Kaladin, and oh—over him.

Kaladin’s bloody tears seeped into Tien’s curls.

———

AGAIN

Kaladin’s spear was a blur as it cut through the enemy squad.

“Why do you keep on trying, Kaladin?”

“I need to protect Tien.” Deflect, spin, strike. The movements were becoming more natural to Kaladin now. Sergeant Tukks would have been proud.

“Why?”

“Because he is my brother. Because his life is priceless.” Thrust.

“Even if he weren’t my brother, I would still protect him—” Block.

“—and I’ll keep on trying so long as there is even a small chance that he lives.” Stab.

“Why?”

“Because—” Parry.

“—Because I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

A crack shook the air, like an enormous clap of thunder, though the sky was completely clear.

These words are accepted.

Kaladin gasped, and the soldier in front of him stumbled back as the world dimmed. Or, no—as Kaladin burst alight .

Wisps of luminescent smoke—was that Stormlight?—streamed up towards him, curling around Kaladin like a circle of ghosts. Exhaustion evaporated. Pain fled. To Kaladin’s astonishment, a split along his arm pulled together and disappeared.

Kaladin breathed in again, and felt himself come truly alive for the first time in his life.

Somewhere, Tien fell with a sword in his chest.

Light fled, and Kaladin fell into darkness.

———

AGAIN

———

AGAIN

———

AGAIN

———

AGAIN

———

AGAIN

———

AGAIN

Stormlight raged in Kaladin’s veins as he leapt down from the rocky outcrop. Syl zipped alongside him, a blue-white streak darting through the deadly tangle of metal and flesh.

“Why are we going this way, Kaladin?”

A luminescent cloud puffed out in front of Kaladin’s lips as he answered. “It’s closer if I round the base of the hill instead of going to the top and descending down the other side.” He veered and deflected a blow aiming for the neck of a boy Tien’s age, then ran on. “There are more enemy soldiers along this route, but I won’t engage unless pressed.”

“This is good, right? Then why are you frowning?”

“Because this isn’t right, Syl. I swear to protect, yet who do I protect people from? Other Alethi! Can you kill to protect? How is what I’m doing different from what Varth did?” Kaladin fought down a visceral rage at the thought of the squadleader. “Doesn’t the journey matter too?”

Syl was silent. She resolved back into her humanoid form and, darting back, perched on his shoulder. The spren huddled down into his hair, seeming smaller.

“Well? Aren’t you an honorspren?”

“I don’t know, Kaladin. I wish I could give you an answer.”

Kaladin was about to reply when he stepped into a patch of vines and it sank inwards .

Again, Kaladin fell. Not into darkness this time.

Into the hands of the Ghostbloods.

Chapter Text

Falling.

Light above, shrinking. Light below, expanding.

Falling back through time, fingers grasping only dark, empty air, his sole companion the wind of his passing.

Kaladin’s brain was still registering the fact that he had fallen into a hidden hole down a chute when the tunnel opened and he was in a small cavern and then his back was crashing into a tabletop and his head was snapping to one side and searing pain pain pain pain pain was pinning him in place, his cry strangled by its weight. Kaladin gasped a wet scream, air laboriously threading its way through broken teeth, mangled tissue and punctured organs.

So it was fortunate that he was lying next to a perfect gemstone infused to the molecule.

The light of a thousand storms flowed into him, and Kaladin’s back arched to the point of breaking as his body pulled itself together fragment by bloody fragment. Finally, finally, he was able to lift his head and look around.

A group of people stared back at him, looking as stunned as he felt. One still had her hands on the chest in which the gemstone lay. Around him were scattered pieces of paper, as well as a few blinking spanreeds.

Time sped back up.

Kaladin leapt into guard position. Half of the people scrambled back while the other half sprang for him. Chairs scraped against the floor, knives slid out of their sheaths, mouths opened in shrill warning. He shoved an axe back, and pressed its owner down against the table. Surprisingly, the man stuck there, glowing faintly. Kaladin spun, deflecting a dagger and turning just in time to see the woman closing the chest. I need that Stormlight! He thrust his hand under the lid as it snapped down, fingers closing around the ruby.

Far above, Tien’s heart stuttered, then stopped, and time folded back in on itself.

—————————

AGAIN

Kaladin opened his eyes and immediately squeezed them shut, stumbling as a blood-red light pierced his eyelids. As he moved to put one arm behind him, however, the glow dimmed.

Kaladin cracked an eye open.

He was holding a ruby the size of a child’s head, which rendered his fingers almost translucent with its radiance.

The gemstone from my last attempt. How is it here?

There was a black cloth tangled in between his fingers as well. Kaladin noticed a symbol etched on it as he covered the gem and its light with the fabric.

Three overlapping diamonds.

———

Somewhere underground, the Ghostbloods were panicking. “How is this happening?” Kabsal asked, slamming his spanreed onto the table. “One moment the King’s Drop is there, the next it isn’t. I’d almost say the Almighty—”

“Oh shut it Kab,” Jin said, golden hair slicked with sweat. “What we need to do now is to cut our losses. The gemstone might still be on the battlefield—we just need to get it back before Mraize has our heads.”

Kabsal groaned. “To think all that time sneaking around Queen Fen’s monastery going to waste—”

———

Syl danced a circle around him as Kaladin climbed out of the stone hollow. Surprisingly, nobody was there to stop him. There, were however, dozens of soldiers stumbling drunkenly around in the middle distance holding their hands to their eyes as if they had just been blinded by a very bright ruby.

Suited Kaladin fine. He breathed deeply, holding more Stormlight than he ever had before. “Syl, do you know why the ruby has stayed with me this repeat?”

She huffed. “You say it like it’s a bad thing. Your spear stays with you. Your clothes stay with you. Most importantly, I stay with you, and I’m intelligent and articulate, so it can’t be bad.”

“My clothes? I—” Kaladin blushed. “Well, all of these things are connected to me, in a broad sense.”

“So the ruby is too, duh!”

Kaladin grunted. He didn’t bother explaining to Syl that the gemstone was probably valuable enough to buy Hearthstone ten times over, and had no business being connected to a darkeyed spearman. Syl was becoming more eloquent by the day, as she was keen to remind him, but her logic was still simplistic and generalized.

———

The light was beautiful.

Tien looked up in wonder as the west slope emanated a calm ruby glow.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“MMMMMMM,” his tunic said.

Tien jumped, but was distracted by a man in gray ardent robes and another with golden hair running past. As he watched, they stabbed a tall post into the ground, then erected another twenty feet away. The posts were connected by a sturdy wire mesh, which made a crackling sound as the golden-haired man jammed a cable into a small box.

Tien bent to study a discarded wire lying on the ground. It had the most fascinating rubber tubing around it, which reflected sunlight in a muted way. Pretty! Picking it up, Tien absently wrapped the wire around his wrist.

———

Kaladin could buy Tien and himself free from the army with this ruby. If only he could reach his brother…

Kaladin sprinted, a raging blue-white bonfire rounding the hill—

—to run straight into a wall that crackled with cold light.

———

Helaran’s head snapped up from where he was sprawled in an indentation in the ground. He elbowed the man beside him. “Nale!”

Nale grunted and looked up. Then he started.

It seemed that the other side of the hill had decided to have its very own bloody red sunset. So much Stormlight!

“Nale, what in Damnation’s tenth name is that!”

Nale was already rising up into the air.

Garnet? Shash. Lightweaver. And to have such a bright glow…the fourth Ideal, at least. No. No!

Nale triple Lashed himself, rounding the hill—

—to run straight into a wall that crackled with cold light.

———

Pain. Then numbness. Muscles spasming, out of control.

Kaladin slid limply to the ground.

———

Pain. Then numbness. Muscles spasming, out of control.

Nale slid limply to the ground.

Darkness.

Chapter Text

AGAIN

“What in the Almighty’s tenth name was that?” Kaladin gasped. His language would have horrified his mother, but being fried by a fence demanded nothing less.

Syl scrunched up her face. “Are you sure it wasn’t Stormlight?”

Light dancing across his skin instead of underneath it. The scent of burning flesh.

“If it was,” Kaladin grumbled as he climbed out of the hollow, “It sure wasn’t meant for humans.” He checked the Stormlight in the ruby, briefly bathing the west side of the incline in red light. Then he took off, along his old route up the hill and down the other side.

Perhaps the journey was becoming more and more baffling. But he knew his destination. It was to protect a boy who saw color in the dullest rocks, who smiled when the sky wept.

———

Jin flipped the switch and stepped back, watching electricity dance across the wall of metallic mesh. “There. A 350-ampere courtesy from Scadrial for any trying to leave the battlefield with the King’s Drop.”

“Shoo!” Kabsal said.

Jin turned around, frowning. His fellow Ghostblood was batting at a round-faced young boy, who clung onto Kabsal’s robe with one hand and a spear with the other. A messenger?

“What are you doing, Master Ardent?”

Jin snickered.

———

Nale squinted. Had that been a flash of garnet light on the other side of the hill?

“Helaran, scout the opposite side of the incline. Prepare to remove a Lightweaver of the third Ideal.”

Helaran patted his authorization badge, saluted Nale, and ran off southwards.

———

Kaladin shoved the young soldier into Dalar’s arms. “He’s wounded! Somebody get him knobweed and a bandage!” He yelled over his shoulder as he crested the wide hilltop and dashed down the southeast side of the hill. Careful not to take in as much Stormlight as he had last time, lest he grow reckless with energy, he located the uneven line of defense and followed Syl’s lead as she darted through the battlefield.

———

Helaran nearly ran face first into the fence.

He Lashed himself upwards just in time. As he soared into the air, he scanned the area. No sign of Lightweavers. But then, those always had a way of hiding in plain sight.

———

The ardent looked down disapprovingly at Tien, and the other two messenger boys shied to the side. But Tien was brave. He had put a lurg in Father’s bath. He had carved the horse for Kaladin when Ral told him to make a chair. He had said the first Ideal of the Knights Radiant.

He had seen a fence crackle with cold light, then fallen into darkness to awake in the past. Something told him this ardent was partially culpable. Actually, not just something. His spren, Rock, was spinning frantically on his tunic, humming nervously. “Bad, Tien, bad—”

Tien patted his side. “Sometimes you worry as much as my brother, Rock,” he whispered. “Things are never as bad as they seem. You’ll see.” Tien inhaled the last of his Stormlight and projected his inner Kaladin. He furrowed his brows and puffed out his chest, giving the blue-eyed ardent his best glare. “I need to know what you are doing!” Stormlight coalesced and wove around him, asserting itself where Tien could not, and he grinned as the ardent’s eyes widened.

———

Kaladin stared at the impossibility.

The man hung in the air, red hair whipping in the wind, glowing. Kaladin had seen, even used Stormlight, but to claim the sky with it…this man seemed larger than life, than reality itself. He must be a Herald returned, for what was time to this majestic creature?

“Stormfather…” Kaladin breathed.

He’s like me. I share something with him, this divinity .

The man spotted something, then moved through the air. He didn’t fly—in fact, it was as if he were falling to the side.

It was beautiful.

Kaladin’s revelry lasted right up until the moment the red-haired man drew a sword from his waist and swooped down, cutting through Tien’s head in a single, easy stroke.

“No!” Kaladin yelled. “No—”

Darkness engulfed his screams.

Chapter Text

ONE

“This can’t continue, Syl,” Kaladin said from where he slumped against a boulder.

The flurry of leaves swirling around him slowed. “Why not?”

“I’ve already lost count of how cycles I’ve been through. I’m a storming Radiant of the Second Ideal! I should be able to save my little brother! Even worse, why would another Radiant want him dead? If I can’t protect Tien, what is my purpose in being here?”

Syl alighted on his shoulder, flowing dress swirling around her knees. “That was no Windrunner. Those highspren…” She trailed off, frowning. “Anyway! I never liked them! You can beat him, Kaladin! Journey before destination, remember?”

“Could I ever manage what he did? Flying?”

“Falling. Yes, I think you already can.”

Kaladin leaned his head back and looked up at the sky. Such…blue. Open, endless, free. He’d been feeling so helpless, in over his head, drowning time and again.

But what if instead of falling down, he could fall up?

Kaladin forced himself to his feet, fingernails digging into his palms. “Can you teach me?”

One, he thought. A new attempt, similar but not the same.

———

FIVE

Kaladin crashed into the banner, stumbling halfway up its length before regaining his balance. From his perspective, he was standing on a pole stuck halfway into a sheer cliff face. Brightlord Sheler stared up at him, slack-jawed.

“Sorry,” Kaladin said.

The banner starting ripping from the ground and Kaladin launched himself back into the air.

———

TEN

“Sergeant Tukks! ” Tukks smacked an enemy soldier with his shield. “Later, Reesh.”

“No, Sergeant. Look! The way that soldier moves…it’s as if he’s two times lighter than the rest of us!”

Tukks’ gaze followed Reesh’s frantic gestures. Then he whistled.

The boy in question must have been dancing with his spear, for Tukks had never known fighting to be so graceful. As Tukks watched, he vaulted over a squad of soldiers, did a somersault in the air, and didn’t come down . A single ring of blue smoke burst out above Tukks’ head.

“Now, I wonder if his former squad would be willing to give him up.”

———

FIFTEEN

Tien looked up as Kaladin fell from the sky towards him, surrounded by a hundred gleeful windspren. His face lit up and an awespren burst around his head. Kaladin was growing increasingly tired of those.

“Tien, duck!” Kaladin screamed into the wind.

“Do you mean a chicken?”

Kaladin saw red as the Skybreaker’s hair flopped into his face and an extremely sharp elbow rammed into his abdomen.

———

TWENTY

There was a fence surrounding the battlefield.

Kaladin narrowed his eyes as he saw a flash of golden hair next to the fence. The last time he had seen that hair, it had been accompanied with a downward-arcing axe racing for Kaladin’s heart, even as he skidded sideways on a table slick with his own blood. Kaladin checked the ruby secured to his waist by its cloth wrap, and scowled at the three overlapping diamonds which lay stark against the velvet. Time to find out what they’re up to. Inhaling Stormlight, he dived down towards the fence. Maybe he could practice the Basic Lashing on things other than himself.

Reaching out, Kaladin touched the fence.

Pain. Then numbness. Muscles spasming, out of control.

Would he ever learn?

———

TWENTY-FIVE

Tien twisted the loose wire in his hands, then again wrapped it around his wrist.

One more twist. One more cycle.

Kaladin was a Surgebinder, like himself. Tien found himself smiling. Of course his brother would be. Ever the capable one, hands both deft with a spear and meticulous with a scalpel, even when blood was pouring from a gut wound, Rillir’s deflated eye looking blankly upward—

Even thinking about that bloody day made Tien woozy.

Rock hummed comfortingly. “You are worthy as you are, Tien. You don’t have to be like your brother.”

“Yes,” Tien whispered. “But they all think so highly of me. What do they see, if not capability?”

Rock thrummed louder. “What do you mean?”

“I guess…” Tien said. “I’m a little glad that Kaladin is drawing the attention of the other glowy flying man.”

“…I guess I’m not as much of a good person as everybody believes.”

These words are accepted.

———

THIRTY

“That abomination! The traitors to mankind have taken the King’s Drop!” Kabsal yelled into Jin’s ear. Jin looked up along Kabsal’s trembling arm to the glowing figure currently cresting the hill. “Looks like a flying teenager to me,” he grumbled. These Rosharans, so surprised at the smallest things yet accustomed to a blustering hurricane every week. When you grew up on Scadrial, you learned to get used to air traffic. Admittedly, Mistborn weren’t usually so blinding.

Made it storming hard to get in a good shot.

———

Kaladin yelped and Lashed himself backward as a small ball of metal whizzed past his face. Another soon followed, then a third, a menacing glint his only warning as Kaladin spun into an erratic downward spiral. One caught him in the shoulder, and Kaladin learned to never again underestimate small missiles. Storm within still raging, Kaladin swooped to pick up a shield from the ground. Time to try—what had Syl called it—a Reverse Lashing. Kaladin stopped dodging and faced the golden-haired man, who held a sleek crossbow-like contraption. He hoisted the shield and willed Light into it.

The man smiled.

A few stray arrows thudded into the shield.

The silvery metal didn’t respond to his Surgebinding. It ran straight at him, trajectories straight and determined, strange arrows with nothing to keep them airborne but speed and spren-like stubbornness.

What a strange thing to die by.

———

THIRTY-FIVE

Kaladin moved as the wind, sweeping up the incline and arcing down towards the other side. He belonged in the skies, his skin made to be bronzed by warm sunlight, his hair made to be tossed in the gale of his passing, his eyes made to look down at everything and nothing at once.

Syl laughed alongside him, and he felt the urge to laugh as well.

How could he enjoy this? How could this feel so right when everything was so wrong?

As if on cue, a stray arrow nicked his right ear, and a bullet whistled past his left.

———

FORTY

Tien was thrumming with Stormlight, but he let Varth push him to the front, squeezing the other messenger boy’s hand. “It’ll be all right,” Tien whispered. From what he could tell, nobody but him and Kaladin were aware of the repeats, and this boy was still terrified at the thought of death.

A steel sword swept down, and Tien stretched out his hand.

A frail, white sun. A sea of beads.

Change! Please, you weren’t made to kill children!

Blood splattered Tien’s shirt, but it wasn’t that of any human. The armored lighteyes stumbled, eyes widening behind the slit in his helm, sword hand suddenly grasping empty air.

Grinning, Tien shielded his eyes against the sun and tried to spot Kaladin.

Something fell from the sky, and everything went black.

———

FORTY-FIVE

“I don’t like Cryptics.” Syl announced.

Kaladin stuck the spears of two soldiers together as they tried to attack a messenger boy, then fell upwards. “Why the sudden sentiment?”

“Because I nearly crashed into one when you got impaled by that sword! You should really stop getting impaled by swords. I hate running into Cryptics.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kaladin said. He swerved a volley of arrows and ploughed straight into a rank of spearmen.

“I didn’t mean get impaled by a spear!” Syl yelled indignantly as the world faded to black.

———

FIFTY

“You, boy! In formation!” Varth barked.

“Just a moment sir,” Tien said, furiously whittling at a piece of wood with his side knife. He needed a distraction, something so that Varth didn’t notice him slipping away. Kaladin needed Tien’s help. In the past ten cycles, Tien had seen Kaladin hit by a shield, hit by a boulder, hit by a person, impaled by a sword, impaled by a spear, and impaled by a particularly sharp rock formation. That last one had involved a lot of blood, and Tien’s vision had been swimming even before he fell into darkness.

There. Holding a sculpture of a messenger boy, Tien breathed out and shaped the Stormlight. Then, as ‘he’ wandered out from the cover of a stumpweight tree towards where Squadleader Varth was pointing, Tien dashed in the opposite direction. Up, towards the flat summit of the hill, so high and so far it might as well have been level with the sun.

Kaladin! Wait!

A whoosh of wind and two clashing vortexes of motion soared over his head.

———

“What do you want?” Kaladin growled as he deflected a blow with his spear.

The Skybreaker canceled his forward Lashings, Kaladin’s momentum carrying him out of striking range. Grudgingly, Kaladin slowed and put his back to the incline. “I’m arresting you for insubordination.”

Kaladin glowered. “Insubordination? Towards whom?”

“I saw Sergeant Dalar order you to stop. You ignored him.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

His opponent triple Lashed himself downward, trying to force him into a command tent. Kaladin’s stomach lurched from his abrupt side Lashing. The older man cursed. “You want to know why I really need to kill you?”

“Oh please. Do enlighten me.”

“Because you’re going to start a Desolation with your bond!”

“Well according to Syl, you have a bond too!”

“Do not doubt a Herald of the Almighty.”

Kaladin rolled his eyes.

“…for I swear to follow the will of Nalan’Elin!”

Wait. That sounded important. Almost like…

Kaladin’s eyes widened and he inhaled almost all his remaining Stormlight. He was a white ball shooting recklessly forward, one Lashing, two, ten . Behind him, an explosion of light. Risking a glance back, Kaladin saw air coalesce before the Skybreaker to form a magnificent blade. The sheer beauty of it, the power and grace inherent in its curves was awe-inspiring. Here was a weapon so natural and so right that to be cut by it almost seemed like a blessing.

“Kaladin, duck!” Syl’s voice snapped him out of his revelry. Where Kaladin’s nose had been seconds before, now passed an arc of impossibly brilliant metal.

So Shardblades were spren. Huh.

———

With a firm hand, Varth guided the shaking child to the front. “Stay there, boy.” Clucking his tongue, he turned to the last of the messenger boys. Though slight of build and round-faced, his naïveté wasn’t most plain in his appearance. Instead, it was in the unguarded gaze that he turned upon the battlefield, not comprehending that he would not leave this place alive. Varth’s gut twisted a little. “Boy, time to get in line.”

The messenger didn’t move.

Varth walked over, annoyance building. The enemy would strike anytime now. “Hey, you! Fall into formation!”

The messenger didn’t move. He shimmered a little. Varth blinked. The shimmer was gone.

Varth reached out a hand to push at the boy’s shoulder, hard.

He never made contact. Instead, a hand reached out from the sky and grabbed his wrist. Then the next moment, Varth was flailing, a mess of screams as he fell upwards, the blue of the sky and the brown of the battlefield spinning around him as if they bore no weight at all.

———

“What did you just do!” An angry blue-white storm cloud demanded of Kaladin as he was again separated from Tien by the Skybreaker’s Shardblade.

“He put my brother in front. That squadleader killed him, Syl! This is justice!”

“You aren’t a Skybreaker.”

“I know, since I’m fighting one!”

Syl got up right in his face, voice lowered. “I don’t like how you get when you think about him, Kaladin. You change. You become angrier, darker.”

Kaladin chanced a look at Tien. He stood still amongst the roiling tumult of the battlefield, eyes unfocused and vacant. Storms…

“War breaks all of us, Syl,” Kaladin whispered.

As if on cue, a flash of incredible pain shot through his spine. Almost, the Stormlight rushed to heal him, but there was no longer any more of Kaladin to heal, his soul trailing wisps of black smoke reaching out for the heavens.

———

FIFTY-FIVE

“Ow!” Amaram yelled as Kaladin tumbled into him, knocking him half off his horse.

“That’s my line,” Kaladin wheezed. He peeled himself off the ground, ribs creaking back into place.

As Kaladin shot into the sky, he was left with the troubling image of the Highmarshall ogling him like he was the answer to some storming thousand-year riddle.

———

SIXTY

Helaran—Syl had gone on a scouting mission and came back with the Skybeaker’s name—swept out with his Shardblade. Kaladin ducked and flew low, clipping the odd helmet, ground a passing blur beneath him. He narrowly avoided Mesh’s spearhead, then swooped around Varth’s squad. There! Kaladin reached towards Tien, ready to Lash him away. Strangely, Tien didn’t even look towards Kaladin.

A whoosh marked Helaran’s arrival. The man struck out, and Kaladin slapped the flat of the Blade with his spear. Helaran’s aim ran wild, the flowing attack passing over Tien’s head—Almighty bless his height—and raced straight towards Varth’s neck.

Before he could think on it, Kaladin dove away from Tien, shoving Varth to the side. The lean squadleader stared at him in wonder, and Kaladin dropped him, suddenly confused. This was the sort of person he protected?

Disoriented, Kaladin was too slow to dodge Helaran’s second blow. Why do I protect?

The Shardblade passed through his arm. Because…because it is right.

White-hot pain, then…nothing. Kaladin’s hand flopped limply to the side, and he watched his spear tumble from greying fingers. Is protecting Varth right? Even when I could’ve saved Tien otherwise?

Helaran drew back, preparing to dive in for the kill.

His father, tending patients in Hearthstone, even those that spited him. His mother, telling him to forgive the villagers their ignorance. Tien, smiling at everybody among the snickers and jibes.

Syl spun around him, agitated but oddly silent.

If I protected only those that I liked…then every noble act becomes selfishness, every strength becomes weakness.

“I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right.”

These words are accepted.

“I knew you could do it! In your face, Father!” Syl exclaimed. “Kaladin, stretch forth thy hand!”

Kaladin reached out, watching Helaran fall towards him, Shardblade aimed straight for Kaladin’s heart. Syl’s ribbon of light became mist, a form she often took. Silver mist, which grew larger, coalesced before Kaladin, extending into his hand.

Clang!

Glowing, brilliant, a Shardblade emerged from the mist, vivid blue light shining from swirling patterns along its length. Sensation flooded back into Kaladin’s other hand, and he extended it as well, the Blade lengthening into a radiant, silvery Shardspear.

Helaran started, losing his balance and skewing to the left. Kaladin spun into him, feeling a slight tug on the Blade as he cut the older man’s legs out from under him. Again he turned towards Tien. Why wasn’t Tien moving? Before he could act, something slammed into him from behind, hard . The Shardspear puffed back into mist as Kaladin skidded across the stones, looking up not to see the sun but another Radiant, a dark-skinned man with a crescent-shaped mark on his right cheek. He swung down with his own Shardblade, and Kaladin summoned Syl as a shield. He held—barely. Arm smarting something fierce from the impact, Kaladin scrambled to the right. This man, the way he fought, even the way he moved…it spoke of honed skill and hard practice, far, far beyond Kaladin’s experience. The Makabaki swung again, effortless and controlled. Kaladin winced and braced himself. But the man’s Blade landed to his left. Kaladin turned and saw another version of himself standing where he had been moments before, eyes burning with defiance, Shardspear held high. How…had he just done that? No time. As the sword passed through the illusion, Kaladin struck, drawing upon his Stormlight in an desperate gasp. There was less than he expected left in the ruby—Helaran must have drawn from it too, for now he was groaning, stumbling upright on weak legs. With superhuman speed, the Makabaki man recovered and spun on Kaladin, a blur with a flashing Blade. Kaladin found himself flat on the ground, disoriented as Stormlight strained to heal a dozen wounds. He blinked away a trickle of blood.

The man leaned down and held up a piece of paper covered in women’s script, dark skin showing not even a hint of sweat. “Authorization to execute Kaladin of Hearthstone, born 1153.”

“I can’t read, sir.” Kaladin managed.

The man straightened and raised his Shardblade.

Everything happened at once. Kaladin inhaled sharply, preparing for a fatal blow. Helaran breathed in, wobbling towards his master. Behind a boulder, there was an audible gasp as an illusion began to form.

Stormlight drained out of the ruby in three directions, leaving the King’s Drop a sudden vacuum. Nale drove the Shardblade down, center of balance tipping forward. He slipped, briefly, on the blood from Kaladin’s head wound. Kaladin twisted to avoid being hit in the neck, and the ruby slid out from under him. Nale caught himself almost immediately, but not before touching the perfect gemstone.

Nale screamed as he was sucked into the King’s Drop. Kaladin screamed as Nale’s Shardblade dropped through his spine. Tien screamed as he watched Kaladin die. Helaran screamed as he watched Nale disappear.

Darkness consumed three of them.