Summary

In the Prologue, Hoa narrates from the first person point of view as he tells Essun he plans to end his story by starting at the beginning. He describes a time before the Stillness existed when he was a different person. He lived in Syl Anagist at a time when the people had “mastered the forces of matter and its composition; they have shaped life itself to fit their whims; they have so explored the mysteries of the sky that they’ve grown bored with it and turned their attention back toward the ground beneath their feet” (3). Standing in its socket in the center of the city is the amethyst obelisk. Two hundred and fifty-six nodes that have an obelisk standing in sockets scattered across the world. The nodes are compared to a web of...