Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

In that moment, I understood the depths of our stupidity—for in shattering Adonalsium, we had removed the divine sense of love and compassion from the other Shards. That one had gone to Aona, among the best of us, and therefore among the first Rayse had sought out to kill. The power of Honor knew only one good: keeping oaths. I knew other goods. I had promised to protect Roshar. This sent a shudder through the power. A confusion. A conundrum. I could have taken it up to fight, but in a moment where I was truly strong, I refused. For once in my life, I turned away, and did not make things worse. But still I did not want to die. Protect me, I begged. A piece of you. The power took a portion of my soul, including my memories, and fled. Odium destroyed the rest with glee. Killing, at long last, his rival. But the power gave this remnant of me to my avatar in the storm—to the spren I had created as a true part of my soul. I died, yes, yet at the same time I lived on. I was now more spren than man. I did not care as much as Tanavast had—for why should a storm care? It could only blow. But secretly I carried a greater truth, and it kept me from being like any other spren. I, in one form, had been there. I knew the burden of terrible loss. For I, the Stormfather, remembered. The corpse of a child held in my arms, broken and burned. Dead cities. A world that had spent thousands of years in an endless war to fuel my promise to best Odium. Last of all, a betrayal of all that I stood ...