The novel flashes back seven years.

Queen Navani Kholin, wife of then-king Gavilar Kholin—her first husband and the brother of Danilar—prepares for the great feast celebrating the treaty with the Parshendi. She confronts Gavilar about abandoning his duties to hold secret councils with unusual people; in their argument, he hints at a doorway to the gods and something more important than negotiations with the Parshendi.

Near the end of the feast, Gavilar is assassinated. Hearing the news, Navani determines that despite the ways Gavilar has changed, she will protect his legacy for their children and for Alethkar, the kingdom he has united.

It is a year after the Everstorm, a powerfully destructive weather pattern created by Odium’s followers and described in the novel Words of Radiance. While Roshar experiences regular highstorms—weather phenomena that affect the entire planet on a regular schedule and follow a predictable route—the Everstorm was a one-off event that was the reverse of a normal highstorm. One of the Everstorm’s magical effects was freeing enslaved parshmen, who prefer now to be called singers.

The kingdom of Herdaz has finally fallen, creating a stream of refugees that make their way to Hearthstone, where Kaladin’s parents, Lirin and Hesina, live. Lirin, a physician, attends to a long line of refugees.