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And so, in the face of the most awful darkness he’d ever felt, Kaladin Stormblessed took a deep breath. Then stood up.
Kaladin stood up to protect Szeth, Syl, and even Ishar. Not because he had to. Not because the situation forced him into it. But because this WAS the man he wanted to be.
“I will protect myself, so that I may continue to protect others.”
He took to heart the lessons of his realm: that in this case, the destination wasn’t about a place, but about a Connection. It was about who you had become, not about where you arrived.
Then he spoke to Honor the most important Words he might ever say. Words that only worked if he could say them truly. “I understand you.”
Dalinar strode toward Odium, the power of Honor surrounding him. He saw it, true honor, in the efforts of two young people to set right an ancient wrong. In the way a young spearman rose to his feet in the darkness. In a man who stood with friends to save a city that was not his own. In the Lightweaver who refused the lies and accepted truth. Even in the way a queen who had been wrong resolved to do better.
Honor was born again in Dalinar Kholin.
It was the power of oaths and the pride that men bore at being thought of as men of oaths. As Dalinar had witnessed: thousands of years of warfare to prove who was right, and who deserved this land.
“Keeping an oath is not an ultimate good, Taravangian,” Dalinar whispered. “It is only as good as the ideals it is sworn to. Uniting is not an ultimate good. It is only as good as the purposes for that unification.
The greater good … regardless of the means used to reach it … That wasn’t the answer. It never had been.
