Odium's Secret Bond

[Golstar]

Assumption 1: Shards can travel freely, but as they use investiture on a specific world they become increasingly bound to that world, and may eventually become unable to leave it.

Assumption 2: Odium has been using investiture for millennia to fight Honor in order to break free of whatever aspect of the Oathpact binds him to Braize

Assumption 3: Odium killed Tanavast and splintered Honor, but is still bound by the Oathpact. In the absence of a Vessel holding Honor, Odium needs a representative of Honor to free him. This is the goal of the contest of champions.

Hypothesis 1: Corrupted and non-native investiture are both red - but at least some of the red investiture we see is actually the corrupted investiture of Honor. We're starting to see golden investiture appear in recent books. This is an indication Odium is becoming a native of the system.

Hypothesis 2: If Odium manages to be victorious in the contest of champions, he will still be fully or partially bound to the Roshar system due to millennia of investiture.

Hypothesis 3: Honor's plan was to trap Odium in the system through cycles of War increasingly binding Honor to Roshar. This would leave Honor trapped in an eternity of struggle, but it would be the honorable thing to do.

If this hypothesis holds, we may see an extremely furious Odium at the end of the first arc. Despite victory he remains bound to Roshar, and now has no alternative but to destroy Braize completely if he wants to escape. This destroys the Fused. Due to the Oathpact he also needs to kill all remaining Heralds. The second arc involves Radiants trying to rally after losing Dalinar and the Stormfather. Perhaps a schism where some orders want to hand over the Heralds to get rid of Odium. Autonomy hates multiple shards in one system so sends an Avatar to help out Odium.