The Obelisk Gate

Content Warning: This section contains references to bigotry and enslavement in a fantasy setting, as well as to forced reproduction and child abuse.

The narrator—revealed to be a stone eater named Hoa in The Fifth Season—states that he has been telling the story wrong by focusing merely on Essun. After explaining that Essun (and by extension Damaya and Syenite) is the amalgamation of everyone she has known and lost, he shifts focus to Nassun, her surviving daughter.

On her way home from creche one day, Nassun is awestruck when she passes by a lorist who has set up shop in the town. Lorists are the caste primarily responsible for studying “stonelore” (humanity’s amassed wisdom, especially about Seasons), and they travel from comm to comm surviving off their ability to tell stories. Nassun desperately wants to get away from her mother, so this life appeals to her. The next day, she skips creche to seek the lorist out. Like her mother, Nassun is an orogene, meaning she has the ability to manipulate kinetic energy and to “sess” seismic activity around her. She uses these abilities to find a diamond in a mineral deposit below the town and offers it to the lorist in return for an apprenticeship.