The Obelisk Gate

Hoa admits he lied to Essun in front of Ykka: Steel doesn’t want to prevent anyone from using the Obelisk Gate but rather wants to use it for his own purpose, and he wants to kill Essun because she can’t be manipulated.

Essun visits Alabaster, who can hardly move now because so much of him has turned to stone. With the stills of Castrima about to turn against the orogenes, she wants to know why Alabaster defended the stills in Meov against the Guardians’ attack, when they both knew Meov would eventually turn on orogenes too. He responds that he did it for her and Corundum, and for the chance that they could have a normal life.

With the vote set for the morning, Essun heads to Ykka’s so that they can watch out for each other. Screams interrupt their sleep, and they discover Cutter has iced someone in the baths. Ykka investigates and believes that the man he killed would not have attacked, as he claims. She kills Cutter in the hope that it will restore order and convince people to stay united. Later that night, there are more screams; a woman who is drunk is attacking an orogene child. She is on top of the child and about to start punching her when Essun arrives. It reminds her of Uche and all the other children she’s lost. She channels the topaz and turns the woman into multicolored stone. In her fury, she is ready to do the same to the rest of the comm when she senses Alabaster in the obelisk too. He manages to calm her down, but Essun realizes that using magic to intervene in this way will have likely killed him. She sprints to the infirmary and her fears are confirmed: Alabaster has completely turned to stone. Antimony delivers a final message from Alabaster: “The onyx is the key. First a network, then the Gate. Don’t rust it up, Essun. Innon and I didn’t love you for nothing” (332). Lerna is there to comfort Essun, and she allows herself to feel human connection again in his arms.

The next morning, Essun interrupts the vote and destroys the voting box with the miniature spinel obelisk Alabaster owned. She tells the comm that people are free to leave and join Rennanis if they want, but if they stay, no one gets to decide that another part of the comm is expendable, and they will not be voting on who gets to be people. She threatens to kill them all if they are not unified and is satisfied the message is received.

Hoa descends deep into the Earth’s core to attempt to negotiate a truce with Father Earth, whom he calls his enemy. He is met with only rage and forced to flee or be temporarily incapacitated. He claims he cannot afford setbacks now that things are moving so quickly.

Castrima-over—the comm’s upper region—is occupied by the army from Rennanis. Essun goes above ground to meet with their leader to attempt a parley, but it becomes clear their goal is to kill everyone in Castrima and take their storecaches. Essun is attacked by a Guardian but rescued by Hoa before she finishes the job.

Ykka has set up an operations center at Flat Top, and the comm is preparing for battle. Her plan involves exploding all the tunnel entrances and then using controlled bursts of orogeny on the surface to excite the nesting boilbugs into swarming. As a contingency, she plans to build an escape tunnel using orogeny. The plan requires an immense amount of orogeny and would be too much for an individual to pull off, but Ykka has a technique she claims will make it possible: she will connect with all the other orogenes and get them to work in parallel, creating a kind of mesh that will amplify their power. Essun recognizes this technique as the same one Alabaster used with her in the past—he called it parallel scaling—and suddenly realizes what he meant by “First a network, then the Gate” (332).

They are stirred to action by one of the tunnel charges exploding. Ykka shows Essun how to create the network between two orogenes, and they make the escape tunnel together. Essun’s awareness expands, and she sees the interconnected magic of everything and finally understands what the obelisks are and how they work. She cools the ground above Castrima, pushing the boilbugs toward the Rennanis army in swarms. Essun is pulled out of the network by the arrival of stone eaters, who are taking out the Castriman orogenes. Hoa protects Essun and then takes her back above ground so that she can connect to the onyx. Its power is so immense it feels like it is going to crush her, but she finds balance and connects to all the other obelisks on her side of the world. Essun manages to trap all the stone eaters in the geodes below. She then reaches for the city of Rennanis and turns everyone there to stone as well.

Before disconnecting, Essun uses the planet-spanning awareness the Obelisk Gate provides to search for Nassun. She finds traces of her in the sapphire to the south, and with her goals accomplished, the Gate automatically begins to disengage. Essun is exhausted but senses three stone eaters around her before she passes out: Hoa, Antimony, and a new one made of alabaster.

Hoa carries Essun down into Castrima and rests her in Lerna’s bed. Trapping stone eaters inside the geodes has destroyed them, and Castrima will quickly become unlivable. One of Essun’s arms has turned to stone and she is in a coma. When Lerna shows up, he is worried about Essun and the fact they now don’t have a comm. Hoa informs him that Essun killed everyone in Rennanis, and he soon realizes that means the people of Castrima could move there; Rennanis has strong walls and deep storecaches. When asked why he stays with Essun, Hoa responds that he loves her.

Nassun awakens in the early hours of the morning and heads outside. Something to the north tugs on her awareness; she senses the connections and amplifications. Steel is there and explains that what she feels is the opening of the Obelisk Gate. Nassun knows it is her mother doing so.

Jija shows up with a knife, and again Nassun is too tired of everything to pretend. He lunges at her, and she instinctively looks to the sapphire above her. In a flash, it transforms into a flickering knife of blue stone that slams into the ground in front of her, stunning Jija out of his movement. He attacks again, and Nassun wills the blade between her and Jija. She is stabbed in the shoulder, but he is turned to stone and shatters.

Steel shows up again and tells her it never ends and that she will kill everyone she loves unless she uses the Gate to smash the moon into the Earth. It will end all Seasons forever—end everything—and she’ll never have to feel the way she feels right now again. Nassun agrees to help him.