Skybreakers Explained: Powers, Oaths and Szeth’s Redemption

Full spoilers for all five published Stormlight Archive books, including Wind and Truth. If you are still reading, bookmark this and come back.

Every guide to the Knights Radiant says the same thing about the Skybreakers: the lawful ones, they fly, the only order that did not abandon its oaths at the Recreance. All true. Nobody says the uncomfortable part out loud. This is the order that kept its promises for two thousand years and still ended up standing behind Odium. Their oaths held perfectly. Their oaths were not the thing that needed to hold.

The basics: spren, Surges, Herald

Skybreakers bond highspren, which appear in the Physical Realm as black slits hanging in the air that can pull open to reveal stars inside them. In Shadesmar they are human silhouettes cut out of the world, with starfields showing through. They are the most distant of the Radiant spren, famously rigid, and honorspren cannot stand them.

The bond grants Gravitation and Division. Gravitation is the Windrunner Surge, so a Skybreaker flies and Lashes exactly the way Kaladin does. Division is destruction and decay. Their Shardplate is formed of luckspren and glows a smoky grey.

Their patron Herald is Nalan’Elin, called Nale, the Herald of Justice. He was the last Herald to accept a patronage and he refused at first, calling the idea vain and irritating. He is also the only Herald who went further and actually joined, retrieving his Honorblade from Shinovar and bonding a highspren of his own, designated 121.

The five Ideals, which are unlike any other order’s

This is the structural thing that makes the order worth a whole article. Every other order discovers its oaths. Kaladin spends most of The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance failing to work out what he is supposed to say. The Skybreakers tell recruits all five Ideals on day one. It is a curriculum, with exams.

First Ideal, the Ideal of Radiance. “Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.” Shared with every order, and among the Skybreakers it grants no powers at all. Hopefuls must first prove their seriousness on a mission. Swearing it does pardon your past crimes, handled through the proper local authorities with the proper paperwork, which tells you a great deal about these people.

Second Ideal, the Ideal of Justice. Szeth’s version: “I swear to seek justice, to let it guide me, until I find a more perfect Ideal.” A master accepts you as a squire. It grants Stormlight and Gravitation, nothing else.

Third Ideal, the Ideal of Dedication. You swear yourself to a code, or sometimes to a person. Szeth’s: “I swear to follow the will of Dalinar Kholin. This is my oath.” You must bond your highspren first. This is the oath that makes you a full Skybreaker, unlocks Division and lets you summon your spren as a Shardblade, and most Skybreakers never go past it. Nale warns that swearing to a person is risky, since people change and your oath does not.

Fourth Ideal, the Ideal of Crusade. Not words, a task. You choose a quest and reach the Ideal only when your highspren judges it complete, which can take decades. Szeth’s was “I will cleanse the Shin of their false leaders, so long as Dalinar Kholin agrees.” Completing it earns Shardplate and the right to take squires.

Fifth Ideal, the Ideal of Law. “I am my own agent. I make my own choices. I. Am. THE LAW!” You stop following the law and become it. For centuries before Szeth, Nale was the only living Skybreaker to have reached it. The order genuinely disagrees about what it means: either you can now do anything, because you are the law, or you may never break one, because you are the law. Both readings are defensible, which is a very Skybreaker problem to have.

What they were originally for

The order began when highspren started handing out Surges in imitation of the Honorblades, and Ishar forced the result into laws and structure. Their job, from then on, was the other Radiants: the military police of the Knights Radiant, the check on nine orders of flying demigods deciding they were above the courts. Thankless work, and they knew it.

The detail the modern order lost is that the ancient Skybreakers were merciful. They treated the law as an ideal to move towards rather than a weapon, and highspren would accept a Radiant following almost any consistent code, including a criminal organization’s. Their running argument with the Windrunners was the one you would expect. Windrunners do what is right and ignore the law to get there. Skybreakers follow the law and the logic and let the outcome be what it is.

The only order that did not break, and what it cost

At the Recreance every other order abandoned its oaths and killed its spren. The Skybreakers did not. Mraize puts it plainly in his letter to Shallan: led by Nale, they are the only order that did not betray its oaths, and they have kept an unbroken clandestine line from ancient days.

Two thousand years alone with one leader did what you would expect. Nale had been tortured in Damnation across uncounted Desolations until he lost the ability to feel, and the order reshaped itself around a man who could no longer be moved by anything except a written rule. Mercy went first. The modern Skybreakers still follow the law to the letter, and they will also get a law changed to suit them, reach for the harshest punishment available, and hunt loopholes as a matter of training. Their fortress overlooks the Purelake in Marabethia, and recruits are brought there to be tested and impressed by the Shards on display.

Then there is the crusade. Around 1153 Ishar told Nale that Radiants returning would hasten the Desolation, so Nale began hunting people who had just bonded spren. Fit the profile and you were recruited. Otherwise you were killed, legally, with paperwork. That hunt is why a Skybreaker acolyte got involved with Shallan’s mother and why the two of them tried to kill a child. Every step of it was lawful, which is the point the order exists to make.

Szeth, and the only exit that worked

Szeth arrives at the Purelake as the most dangerous man alive and the least free. Nale kills him, revives him, hands him Nightblood, the sentient sword out of Warbreaker, and enrolls him. In training he is sent after escaped convicts and notices they are starving, that the fort has one guard, and that the prison itself is being run illegally. He confirms with Ki that the administrator is on the list of the guilty, draws Nightblood, and kills him. That earns the Second Ideal and makes him Ki’s squire.

Then Nale returns with the truth about the Recreance and a choice. The singers were the original owners of Roshar, so by his reading the law of the land is theirs and the order should side with Odium. Most of them go with him, most easily the ones whose Third Ideal was to follow Nale personally. Szeth talks it over with a sword, concludes there is always a choice, and swears himself to Dalinar instead.

The ending is the part people misremember. In Wind and Truth Szeth reaches the Fifth Ideal in Shinovar, becomes the law, and immediately walks out. He severs the Nahel bond, tells 12124 they were never suited to each other, and leaves. The order’s highest achievement, reached once in centuries, and the man who gets there uses it to quit. His spren survives, since highspren keep their bonds shallow enough that renouncing does not kill them, and later turns up on another planet entirely under the name Auxiliary.

Nale gets his ending too

Nale spends five books as the most frightening kind of antagonist, the one who is never wrong about any individual fact, and underneath it he is a man who believes whatever Ishar tells him. Lift gets through to him once in Edgedancer, long enough for him to see that the Everstorm has come and he killed for nothing, and then he goes straight back to Ishar for comfort.

In Wind and Truth, Ishar returns all the pain he had been holding back and Nale collapses under everything he has done. Kaladin severs the Connection and Nale stands up as himself for the first time in millennia, then agrees to help reforge the Oathpact once he learns there will be no torture this time, and swears Kaladin in as the tenth Herald before vanishing with the rest of them. Not a redemption arc so much as a man finally allowed to stop.

Why the Skybreakers are the best argument in the series

The Radiant orders are usually read as flavours: the brave ones, the clever ones, the weird ones. The Skybreakers carry a thesis. They are proof that an unbroken oath is not the same as a good one, and that a system built to stop tyranny will happily produce it once the person reading the system can no longer feel anything.

Which is why Szeth’s ending lands the way it does. The order’s final Ideal is the one where you stop needing an external authority. You would expect that to be the moment a Skybreaker becomes most dangerous. Szeth makes it the moment he stops. “I am my own agent” is not a promotion inside the order, it is the door out of it, and the man they trained to be the perfect instrument is the one who finds it.

Frequently asked questions

What Surges do the Skybreakers have?

Gravitation and Division. Gravitation lets them Lash objects and people to change the direction gravity pulls them, which is how they fly, and works essentially as it does for Windrunners. Division destroys and degrades matter, and unusually, most Skybreakers cannot use it until after the Third Ideal.

What are the five Ideals of the Skybreakers?

The Ideal of Radiance (the shared First Ideal, no powers), the Ideal of Justice (Stormlight and Gravitation, makes you a squire), the Ideal of Dedication (bond your highspren and swear to a code or a person, which makes you a full Skybreaker and unlocks Division and a Shardblade), the Ideal of Crusade (complete a chosen quest, earning Shardplate), and the Ideal of Law (become the law itself).

Why did the Skybreakers not break their oaths at the Recreance?

They are the only order that refused, and they kept a continuous secret line from ancient days through to the True Desolation under Nale. The trade off is that two thousand years under one emotionless Herald turned a merciful order into a rigid one that exploits loopholes and reaches for the harshest punishment available.

Does Szeth stay a Skybreaker?

No. He swears the Fifth Ideal in Wind and Truth and then immediately breaks his Nahel bond and leaves the order, telling his highspren that they are not suited to one another and that he disapproves of Nale’s Skybreakers. He is the only Skybreaker other than Nale known to have reached the Fifth Ideal.

Why do the Skybreakers side with Odium?

Nale reasons that the singers were the original owners of Roshar, so the rightful law of the land is theirs, and the order follows the law. Most of the Skybreakers and the highspren go with him. Szeth is one of the very few who refuse, and he swears himself to Dalinar Kholin instead.