8 ways Wind and Truth changed Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere forever

Last week, Brandon Sanderson released the fifth book in his epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive, and now nothing will ever be the same for his fictional universe, the Cosmere. Wind and Truth marks the end of The Stormlight Archive's first arc, with the forces of good clashing against the evil god Odium as he stakes his claim on the storm-wracked world of Roshar. But in the Cosmere, everything is connected, with many of Sanderson's stories taking place on different different planets in this universe. Wind and Truth was a major turning point for The Stormlight Archive, but now that we're this deep into the overarching Cosmere story, it also has mind-blowing implications for the universe at large.

Now that Wind and Truth has been out for a minute, let's look back at some of the ways it's changed the status quo for the Cosmere. There will be MASSIVE SPOILERS in this article for Wind and Truth, so if you haven't read that book...what are you doing here?! Go read Wind and Truth, read our review, and then come back once you've picked your brain up off the floor so we can discuss these eight ways that it changed the Cosmere forever.

1. Retribution and the Sunmaker's Gambit

If there's one major development from which many of the others in this article stem, it's the ascension of Odium to become a new entity, known as Retribution. Wind and Truth kept Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant on the back foot, mainly thanks to the fact that Odium's previous vessel, an ancient man named Rayse, was killed in the preceding book and replaced by Taravangian, a king of Roshar plagued by a personality split between being terrifyingly intelligent and debilitatingly empathetic. Over the course of Wind and Truth we see Taravangian finally get his two sides in alignment as he comes fully into his own as Odium.

Then, in the contest of champions, he undergoes yet another change when Dalinar Kholin renounces his claim to the Shard of Honor, giving Odium the chance to absorb it for himself. So far in the Cosmere, we've only ever seen one entity embody two Shards: Sazed, the Terris scholar from Mistborn who later becomes known as the god Harmony. Now, Odium's new form is right up there with Harmony in terms of power, balancing the Shards of Honor and Odium in a new form named Retribution.

Though this is awful news for the Cosmere at large, Dalinar made the choice to give over the Shard of Honor on purpose as part of a strategic ploy nicknamed the Sunmaker's Gambit. In essence, by elevating Odium to even greater heights (and unshackling him from Roshar in the process), Dalinar made it impossible for the rest of the Shards existing on other worlds to continue ignoring the threat he posed. As Hoid says in the final chapters of Wind and Truth, the other Shards were content to pretend "the murderer who had killed at least three of their number wasn't their problem."

Well, Retribution is now undeniably everyone in the Cosmere's problem. That'll cause a lot of heartache in the coming years, but it might also just propel the disparate powers of the universe to unite against him.

2. The demise of other Shards and the true threat to the Cosmere

Speaking of the other Shards, Wind and Truth finally gave us some significant backstory that revealed the fate of several of them. In the Cosmere, the Shards are pieces of the original god, Adonalsium, each of which represents facets of existence — Ruin, Preservation, Honor, Cultivation, Autonomy, and so on. In ancient days, Adonalsium was murdered by a group of individuals from the world of Yolen, which subsequently shattered him into the Shards. The individuals each took one of these divine aspects into themselves, becoming "vessels" for divinity and setting out into the wider Cosmere as lesser gods, where they influenced events in their own given solar systems.

At least that's how it was supposed to work. During the penultimate section of Wind and Truth, Dalinar Kholin lives through the millennia-long existence of Tanavast, the previous vessel of Honor. There, he learns that before Odium traveled to Roshar's solar system and was trapped there, he killed several of the other Shards: Ambition, Domination, and Devotion, whom Tanavast recalls by their pre-Shard names: Uli Da, Skai, and Aona, respectively.

This is a massive reveal, because we've already seen the worlds which were supposed to be ruled by these three Shards. Ambition was the Shard overseeing the world of Threnody, which features in Sanderson's novella Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. That world is now a place of darkness, haunted by malevolent shades. Domination and Devotion were the two Shards balancing the world of Sel, which is where Sanderson's stories Elantris and The Emperor's Soul are set. Just like Threnody, Sel is out of balance by the time we see it in Elantris, with the "Shaod" affliction which gives people magic powers turned into a curse that makes them the equivalent of immortal lepers instead.

Now, we finally know what caused the issues that sparked these declines: Odium murdered the Shards who watched over those worlds. But he did not take their power, knowing it would be too hard to contain multiple Shards in his own body. It isn't until Taravangian replaces Odium's previous vessel, Rayse, that he gets the idea to give that daring and potentially disastrous idea a chance.

All this confirms something about the ultimate nature of the overarching conflict in Sanderson's Cosmere: Odium isn't just the main villain of The Stormlight Archive, but the main villain of the overall Cosmere saga, at least at this point. He not only messed up things on Roshar and Ashyn — the original human world in that system — but he also ruined things on Sel and Threnody. Now that he's become Retribution, his path of destruction is likely just getting started.

3. The Night of Sorrows

While Retribution poses a threat to every single living being in the Cosmere, no world is in more danger than Roshar. That is Retribution's home base, and until he sets out into the cosmos, he'll be doing most of his scheming and army-building from the main planet of The Stormlight Archive.

After Odium absorbed the Shard of Honor and become Retribution, a cataclysmic event known as the Night of Sorrows took place on Roshar. It nearly destroyed all spren, reshaped the lines of power on the map, destroyed the planet's trademark highstorms, and replaced them with a new, less potent but ever-present version of the Everstorm. Dark clouds and red lightning reign Roshar now as Retribution plans his next moves.

There are only two places on the entire planet which are unaffected by this new Everstorm: Azir, which managed to resist Odium's advances during the lead-up to the contest of champions; and Urithiru, the tower of the Knights Radiant which is encased in an impenetrable pillar of light. Roshar is going to be an ominous place whenever we visit it next.

4. No more Stormlight

While everything about the Night of Sorrows was bad, the element which has the broadest implications for the Cosmere is that after Retribution's ascension, there is no more Stormlight. It was tied to Honor, and Honor is now well and truly dead. Instead, Odium's own Voidlight is now the primary magic force on Roshar.

This is hugely important for a few reasons. The first is that the Knights Radiant can no longer power many of their abilities. Their bonds to their spren are still in tact, but the Surges which let them do incredible things like fly and shape stone are no longer accessible. This also means that travel between Shadesmar and the Physical Realm is no longer easily possible.

On the grander scale, it also means that people from other planets will no longer be coming to Roshar in hopes of getting Stormlight for themselves. A large plotline in The Stormlight Archive revolves around a shadowy group called the Ghostbloods, which has ties to the Mistborn planet Scadrial. One of their aims was to get Stormlight off of Roshar, and now that that goal is no longer in their reach, it's anyone's guess how they're going to change their strategy as the Cosmere heads into its next phase.

5. The timeline confirmed

Yet another massive side effect of the Night of Sorrows is that Roshar is now trapped in a strange time bubble, which makes time pass much more slowly there than on the rest of the Cosmere. This is a result of the cataclysmic clash between Shards when Odium ascended to become Retribution. Near the end of Wind and Truth, it's estimated that around 10 years will pass on Roshar before time evens out again. Meanwhile, around 80 years will have passed in the rest of the Cosmere.

This conveniently fits with the time jump that Brandon Sanderson has said will occur between books 5 and 6 of The Stormlight Archive. It will also give planets with swiftly developing technology, like Scadrial, time to plow ahead into modernity. And of course, if anyone from Roshar leaves the planet through the Cognitive Realm, they'll find themselves much older than their loved ones by the time they return. The Rosharans are trapped, unless they want to cut all worldy ties.

While this would all be mind-blowing enough on its own, the final chapters of Wind and Truth also crystallize the timeline of the overall Cosmere a bit better. In those chapters, we see Hoid awaken on Scadrial after he's vaporized by Retribution, thanks to a bit of cell culture he left on the Mistborn planet which allows him to regenerate. He arrives there during the Wax & Wayne era and promptly enters into service as the carriage driver for House Ladrian — a role we see him perform throughout Mistborn Era Two.

I've always wondered how Hoid could manage to be in two places at once, appearing in Wax & Wayne as a carriage driver on Scadrial and as the irascible Wit on Roshar during The Stormlight Archive. Now we know: Wind and Truth occurs before the first Wax & Wayne book, The Alloy of Law.

The one catch to all this is Iyatil, the Ghostblood woman whom Shallan kills in Wind and Truth. Some of the Ghostbloods believe she's still alive during the epilogue of the final Wax & Wayne book, The Lost Metal. But as Thaidakar tells Shallan late in Wind and Truth, months are passing on Scadrial over the course of days on Roshar. It's entirely possible that Hoid wakes up on Scadrial before The Alloy of Law, but enough time has passed on Roshar by the time of Shallan's conversation with Thaidakar that we're into later Wax & Wayne books. Or Thaidakar simply hasn't told Iyatil's brother Dlavil about her demise. The Lord of Scars does love his secrets.

6. The new Oathpact and Kaladin, King of the Heralds

The Oathpact was a source of great mystery throughout The Stormlight Archive, and in Wind and Truth we saw a new version of it being reforged. The original Oathpact was formed between Honor and the 10 Heralds, and it kept the souls of Odium's Fused warriors locked on the planet Braize between Desolations. The catch was that the Heralds' own souls also went to Braize, where they underwent torture for millennia. Each time one of them broke and gave in to the torture, they were all sent back to Roshar to fight in the next Desolation. This cycle went on and on, gradually wearing down the sanity of the Heralds, until they walked away from the Oathpact at the very beginning of The Stormlight Archive.

By the time of Wind and Truth, the Oathpact is well and truly broken, thanks to the Windrunner traitor Moash murdering Jezrien, King of the Heralds. We discover late in the book that another Herald, Ishar, has been molding Szeth-son-Neturo into a viable candidate to become a new Herald in order to reforge the Oathpact. He does this with the goal of creating a human version of Fused under this new Oathpact, which would have their souls reborn over and over for eternal warfare.

However, before Ishar's plan can bear fruit, Odium claims the Shard of Honor and begins the Night of Sorrows. Too wounded to become a new Herald, Szeth is knocked out of the running — which likely suits him, as he was just beginning to rediscover his own will to live, and submitting to eternal torture would have been a horrible end for Szeth.

Instead, Kaladin Stormblessed takes up the mantle of Herald and Ishar alters the Oathpact: instead of the Heralds being sent to a place of eternal torture, their minds would be sent to another world, verdant and beautiful, where they could finally rest and begin recovering their sanity before returning for one last battle against Retribution. And Kaladin, as Roshar's first therapist as well as a peerless warrior, is the perfect match for this new Oathpact.

Reforging the Oathpact not only promises to renew the Heralds and begin locking the Fused away once more, but it also saves all the spren on Roshar. Following Odium's ascension, he attempts to eradicate the spren — who are cognitive spirits born from Honor's power — from Roshar. But the reforging of the Oathpact balances the planet out enough that it prevents Retribution from following through on this plan, since it means the Heralds have preserved some sliver of Honor's original power there.

The spren are one of the most unique aspects of Brandon Sanderson's world of Roshar. It'd have been a shame to see them go, and I doubt I'm alone in my sigh of relief that Kaladin and the Heralds managed to save them. And whenever Kaladin and the Heralds do return to fight Retribution, you can bet they'll be a force unlike any other in the Cosmere.

7. The Dawnshards

Late in The Stormlight Archive, Brandon Sanderson introduced the concept of Dawnshards — mythically powerful magics related to the four commands which Adonalsium used to create the Cosmere. We're just getting the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding Dawnshards in the context of the wider Cosmere, but in Wind and Truth, we saw two of them make their way off Roshar and out of Retribution's grasp.

The first went with Rysn, a young merchant who discovered her Dawnshard in a Stormlight novella, aptly named Dawnshard. We have no idea where Rysn headed when she left Roshar, but after encountering another person bearing a Dawnshard, she knew that she could not stay on the planet, as having two Dawnshards in one place was far too dangerous.

That other Dawnshard was held all this time by Hoid, the world-hopping man who appears in each of Sanderson's Cosmere novels. After sending Rysn on her way, Hoid continues to help out on Roshar...until Odium claims Honor's Shard and becomes nigh-unstoppable. Knowing that Retribution would be coming directly to murder him, Hoid entrusts his Dawnshard to his former apprentice, Sigzil. Hoid is then promptly vaporized and ends up on Scadrial.

Sigzil, meanwhile, slips through Retribution's fingers without the deity ever learning about his Dawnshard. When last we see Sigzil, he's heading off-planet with a group of Iriali through the Cognitive Realm, where he encounters a highspren named 12124 — the former spren of Szeth. This sets up Sanderson's novel The Sunlit Man, though there are a lot of mysteries still to be uncovered in the time between it and the end of Wind and Truth.

8. The Blackthorn

The last way that Wind and Truth changes the Cosmere forever is devastating. One of the key points to the contest of champions between Dalinar and Odium was that if Odium won, Dalinar would be forced to become his general on an interstellar campaign to conquer the Cosmere. In his younger years, Dalinar was a ruthless warlord known as the Blackthorn, and he earned his bloody reputation many times over. There could be no scarier leader for Odium's armies.

Thankfully, Dalinar manages to escape this fate by heroically sacrificing himself to save his grandson, Gavinor. So while Odium wins the contest, Dalinar doesn't have to become a genocidal maniac.

However, Retribution then searches for a suitable replacement in the Spiritual Realm, where Dalinar previously ran into a memory of his younger Blackthorn self and, seeking to stun it into letting him escape that terrifying encounter, infused this other Blackthorn with foreknowledge of all the horrors he would go on to commit. The result is a shade of the Blackthorn in his prime, with all the knowledge he'll eventually develop throughout his conquests and none of the remorse.

Retribution chains this Blackthorn to his will. So while Dalinar may rest in peace, the Cosmere will soon come to fear the Blackthorn nonetheless.

Wind and Truth is available now wherever fine books are sold. While we continue to pore over it, Brandon Sanderson is already hard at work on his next books. In the coming years he'll be writing another Mistborn trilogy as well as two more sequels to Elantris. The wider war for the Cosmere is just beginning.

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