Nightblood Is Changing: Surges and Self-Control

[Wits instant noodles he/him]

 

So I went back and reread Szeth’s battle scene and realized in all the chaos I actually missed some huge Nightblood moments. Two things stood out to me:

1. Nightblood learning to grant Surges (or at least redirect Investiture into them)

2. Nightblood choosing to shut herself off — a major break from her usual nature

I want to unpack these, share a few thoughts, and see what everyone here thinks.

---

1. Surges — Nightblood as a “universal adapter”?

It didn’t surprise me that Nightblood was Connected enough to give Szeth power — he’s already used Nightblood, so there’s a pathway for it. But the crazy part is that Nightblood didn’t just burn the Investiture she consumed; she redirected it to a specific end. That’s new.

Some questions I’ve been thinking about:

• Can Nightblood grant all Surges?
  She says she’s “learned from the other swords” (plural). That almost certainly means Shardblades / Honorblades. Later she adds: “I can restore your Lashings; those are easy.” That wording makes me think she can recharge powers someone already had — basically restoring or fueling an existing spiritweb — rather than handing out totally new powers at will, but it seems at least possible that she could maybe grant surges or other magics to someone who has never had them.

• Could Nightblood grant other magics (like Allomancy)?
  If Nightblood spent time around Mistborn and got Connection to someone like Kelsier, could she “restore” his ability to burn metals? My guess: maybe . Surgebinding and Allomancy are patterned differently on the Spiritual level. Nightblood doesn’t seem to rewrite the spirit web, though its hard to tell with only one example, but for someone like Kel whos already got Mistborn wrighten in is sDNA it seems at least possible. 

• So what’s really happening?
  I think Nightblood now can act like a kind of universal Investiture adapter. She burns what she consumes, but instead of annihilating it she can re-channel it through an existing Invested framework. For Szeth, that means fueling Lashings. For others… maybe more or less limited, depending on what their Spiritweb already supports.

It’s still insanely powerful, but maybe not “Nightblood can hand out every magic system to anyone.” Yet.

---

2. Reawakening — Nightblood choosing to stop

The other wild moment is when Nightblood just… stops. She doesn’t destroy Szeth or Kaladin, even though that’s her usual mode.

That’s never happened before. Even though Nightblood is sentient, she’s always been bound to her original Command: “Destroy Evil.” She never had the flexibility to just not. But now she does — at least in this one scene.

Why?

• Odium overfill. Right before this, Nightblood maxed out on Odium’s raw Investiture — one of the most potent “feeds” she’s ever had. My theory: being stuffed with that much power stretched her Spiritweb / Cognitive Identity enough to create new degrees of freedom.

• Learning from other swords. She specifically says she learned from “the other swords.” Maybe not just about Surges, but about how things work in the Cosmere — she’s picking up new Cognitive patterns from Shardblades, Honorblades, and even living sprenblades.

So I think we’re watching Nightblood evolve. She’s becoming more self-aware, more flexible, and less locked into her destructive function.

---

3. Big Picture — What This Could Mean

If Nightblood can now redirect Investiture and fuel powers instead of only consuming… she’s no longer just a doomsday weapon. She’s a potential tool — or worse, a wild card — for manipulating Investiture itself. That’s terrifying and exciting in equal measure.

open questions:

• Can she eventually grant new Surges or powers, not just restore old ones?

• Will the Odium infusion have lasting effects beyond what we’ve seen?

• Could Nightblood ever cross systems and fuel something like Allomancy, Awakening, or Sand Mastery?

• Or is this just the first step in Nightblood becoming something fundamentally new?

Lemme know what y'all think!

[Through The Living Ash he/him]

15 minutes ago, Wits instant noodles said:

 

So I went back and reread Szeth’s battle scene and realized in all the chaos I actually missed some huge Nightblood moments. Two things stood out to me:

1. Nightblood learning to grant Surges (or at least redirect Investiture into them)

2. Nightblood choosing to shut herself off — a major break from her usual nature

I want to unpack these, share a few thoughts, and see what everyone here thinks.

---

1. Surges — Nightblood as a “universal adapter”?

It didn’t surprise me that Nightblood was Connected enough to give Szeth power — he’s already used Nightblood, so there’s a pathway for it. But the crazy part is that Nightblood didn’t just burn the Investiture she consumed; she redirected it to a specific end. That’s new.

Some questions I’ve been thinking about:

• Can Nightblood grant all Surges?
  She says she’s “learned from the other swords” (plural). That almost certainly means Shardblades / Honorblades. Later she adds: “I can restore your Lashings; those are easy.” That wording makes me think she can recharge powers someone already had — basically restoring or fueling an existing spiritweb — rather than handing out totally new powers at will, but it seems at least possible that she could maybe grant surges or other magics to someone who has never had them.

• Could Nightblood grant other magics (like Allomancy)?
  If Nightblood spent time around Mistborn and got Connection to someone like Kelsier, could she “restore” his ability to burn metals? My guess: maybe . Surgebinding and Allomancy are patterned differently on the Spiritual level. Nightblood doesn’t seem to rewrite the spirit web, though its hard to tell with only one example, but for someone like Kel whos already got Mistborn wrighten in is sDNA it seems at least possible. 

• So what’s really happening?
  I think Nightblood now can act like a kind of universal Investiture adapter. She burns what she consumes, but instead of annihilating it she can re-channel it through an existing Invested framework. For Szeth, that means fueling Lashings. For others… maybe more or less limited, depending on what their Spiritweb already supports.

It’s still insanely powerful, but maybe not “Nightblood can hand out every magic system to anyone.” Yet.

---

2. Reawakening — Nightblood choosing to stop

The other wild moment is when Nightblood just… stops. She doesn’t destroy Szeth or Kaladin, even though that’s her usual mode.

That’s never happened before. Even though Nightblood is sentient, she’s always been bound to her original Command: “Destroy Evil.” She never had the flexibility to just not. But now she does — at least in this one scene.

Why?

• Odium overfill. Right before this, Nightblood maxed out on Odium’s raw Investiture — one of the most potent “feeds” she’s ever had. My theory: being stuffed with that much power stretched her Spiritweb / Cognitive Identity enough to create new degrees of freedom.

• Learning from other swords. She specifically says she learned from “the other swords.” Maybe not just about Surges, but about how things work in the Cosmere — she’s picking up new Cognitive patterns from Shardblades, Honorblades, and even living sprenblades.

So I think we’re watching Nightblood evolve. She’s becoming more self-aware, more flexible, and less locked into her destructive function.

---

3. Big Picture — What This Could Mean

If Nightblood can now redirect Investiture and fuel powers instead of only consuming… she’s no longer just a doomsday weapon. She’s a potential tool — or worse, a wild card — for manipulating Investiture itself. That’s terrifying and exciting in equal measure.

open questions:

• Can she eventually grant new Surges or powers, not just restore old ones?

• Will the Odium infusion have lasting effects beyond what we’ve seen?

• Could Nightblood ever cross systems and fuel something like Allomancy, Awakening, or Sand Mastery?

• Or is this just the first step in Nightblood becoming something fundamentally new?

Lemme know what y'all think!

I was just thinking about this the other day. I agree with most of your points, including the continued progression of Nightblood to be able to grant at least some other magics. We do know that when Nightblood first tries to use Surgebinding during Szeth's duel in the CR, Nightblood failed, instead creating a large blast of power when in contact with the Edgedancer Honorblade. I would like to think that this, not being something that Nightblood could already do or that is normally granted by the surges, is a sign that Nightblood could potentially find that they can get abilities of their own outside of those from preestablished magic systems. I also think that, potentially in addition to the reasons for Nightblood's change that you listed, Nightblood is and has been sentient and so is capable of changing how they interpret the Command, with reason to do so and enough willpower. 

[Argenti he/him]

2 hours ago, Wits instant noodles said:

Could Nightblood grant other magics (like Allomancy)?
If Nightblood spent time around Mistborn and got Connection to someone like Kelsier, could she “restore” his ability to burn metals? My guess: maybe . Surgebinding and Allomancy are patterned differently on the Spiritual level. Nightblood doesn’t seem to rewrite the spirit web, though its hard to tell with only one example, but for someone like Kel whos already got Mistborn wrighten in is sDNA it seems at least possible

I suspect he needs to be around more than just a mistborn-- they need to be around a mechanical, partly sentient version of investiture. For allomancy, this would be medalions. 

 

Also.

Did you get chat gpt to edit this?

[Wits instant noodles he/him]

2 minutes ago, Argenti said:

Did you get chat gpt to edit this?

Yeah I did I could quite figure out how to get across what I was tying to say clearly

3 minutes ago, Argenti said:

they need to be around a mechanical, partly sentient version of investiture. For allomancy, this would be medalions

Interesting I wonder if medallions would actually work for this purpose, I’d thought about it but figured they weren’t sentient enough. But I guess that depends on how invested of a medallion you use maybe? I dunno 

[Argenti he/him]

2 minutes ago, Wits instant noodles said:

Yeah I did I could quite figure out how to get across what I was tying to say clearly

Interesting I wonder if medallions would actually work for this purpose, I’d thought about it but figured they weren’t sentient enough. But I guess that depends on how invested of a medallion you use maybe? I dunno 

Medalions are pretty sentient, and i think there's a wob somewhere that says it.

I was right lol.

I've gotten good at smelling chatgpt

[Wits instant noodles he/him]

Do you know what specifically it says? I’ve been trying to find any about metal minds and sapient but closes thing I can find is him saying scadrial doesn’t have sentient investiture

Quote

Questioner

I've noticed that seons and spren are very, very similar but I haven't seen anything like that in the Mistborn world.

Brandon Sanderson

In Mistborn the Investiture took other forms. It never obtained sapience in the same way. Its theoretically possible that it could have but it.. yeah.

Questioner

So it wouldn't be like the mist?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you could say that the mist has a bit of sentience to it, so yes. But there are a bunch of different things going on. On one hand, you've got, right up to the end, Preservation's Cognitive Shadow is still around doing stuff, he's basically still there, so that's preventing it. You've got— it's just a very different situation.

Shadows of Self Portland signing (Oct. 10, 2015)

 

Edited October 5, 2025 by Wits instant noodles

[Trusk'our he/him]

12 minutes ago, Wits instant noodles said:

Do you know what specifically it says? I’ve been trying to find any about metal minds and sapient but closes thing I can find is him saying scadrial doesn’t have sentient investiture

Is this it?

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509-youtube-spoiler-stream-5/#e15930

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

 

[Argenti he/him]

3 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Is this it?

  Hide contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509-youtube-spoiler-stream-5/#e15930

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

 

Yes. That is it.

[Wits instant noodles he/him]

Mmm gotcha that is really interesting yeah it probably would be metal minds that Nightblood would learn from. Dope!

[Treamayne]

4 hours ago, Wits instant noodles said:

The other wild moment is when Nightblood just… stops.

Keep in mind that, until RoW, one of the main reasons why Nightblood's Sapience regresses while drawn is because of how the Animating Breaths interact with the Command.
Warbreaker Annotations to Ch 58:
 

Spoiler

Note that Nightblood doesn’t remember being drawn. When he was created, the Breaths gave him sentience as planned. (That was a big part of the goal in making him—to prove the existence of Type Four BioChromatic entities.) However, once he is drawn, his Command takes force and he acts much more like a regular Awakened object—only one with very strange abilities and powers. During this time, his Breath is diverted to creating the powers, and his mind goes fuzzy.

So, in theory, Nightblood is becoming suffiently invested to retain Sapience while the Command-Driven Breaths are diverted to creating the powers. To me, this implies more mind and memory to control how Nightblood acts while drawn (including the ability to stop drawing on the wielder). 

[Hoids Imaginary Friend]

Let's not forget when facing off with the Edgedancer in the CR, Szeth was out of stormlight and Nightblood held the beads together.

[Qianweilian He/him]

On 10/4/2025 at 3:52 PM, Wits instant noodles said:

herself

Sorry, being a bit nitpicky here, but Nightblood doesn't identify as female or any other gender, unlike spren.

On 10/4/2025 at 3:52 PM, Wits instant noodles said:

Or is this just the first step in Nightblood becoming something fundamentally new?

We've already seen that Nightblood can control itself far better, so I agree that Nightblood is changing. I'd also like to mention that we have never even seen or heard of Nightblood in anything set past WaT.

On 10/4/2025 at 3:52 PM, Wits instant noodles said:

could she “restore” his ability to burn metals?

I actually am not sure about this. I suspect that the cause of Kelsier lacking powers is the fact that he is a cognitive shadow stapled to a mistwraith through hemalurgy and subsequently being unable to burn the metal inside this mistwraith. But it is possible that Nightblood might be able to allow Kelsier to use his abilities. Although Nightblood might just eat Kelsier, due to him being composed of investiture.

On 10/4/2025 at 3:52 PM, Wits instant noodles said:

Can she eventually grant new Surges or powers, not just restore old ones?

A thought that occurred to me as I was answering this is the possibility that a bond of some sort might be required. We've been seeing new and different types of bonds throughout WaT, so many Nightblood needs to connect to the user. Perhaps that's what grants it the increased sapience in the first place, like how spren lose themselves in the Physical Realm without a bond.

[Wits instant noodles he/him]

On 10/6/2025 at 9:40 AM, Qianweilian said:

Sorry, being a bit nitpicky here, but Nightblood doesn't identify as female or any other gender, unlike spren.

Ahhhh yeah I always forget that my bad! 
 

 

On 10/6/2025 at 9:40 AM, Qianweilian said:

Perhaps that's what grants it the increased sapience in the first place, like how spren lose themselves in the Physical Realm without a bond

I had not even thought about how it could be similar to the spren bonds that’s super interesting, I don’t know for sure if that’s true 100% though cause otherwise there’s a way for you to have a deadeye Nightblood but I don’t think that’s actually possible.  

[Argenti he/him]

On 10/6/2025 at 11:40 AM, Qianweilian said:

Sorry, being a bit nitpicky here, but Nightblood doesn't identify as female or any other gender, unlike spren.

I mean, Pronouns are useful to refer to someone, and Nightblood doesn’t really care how he's reffered to. They think gender is neat!

[Qianweilian He/him]

8 hours ago, Wits instant noodles said:

otherwise there’s a way for you to have a deadeye Nightblood but I don’t think that’s actually possible.  

I mean, aviar and rhyshadium create  nahel bonds and we've never seen a deadeye one of those. Irc, though don't quote me on this, deadeyes are a new thing since Ba-Ado-Mishram's capture.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Qianweilian said:

I mean, aviar and rhyshadium create  nahel bonds and we've never seen a deadeye one of those. Irc, though don't quote me on this, deadeyes are a new thing since Ba-Ado-Mishram's capture.

Deadeyes were only a thing after Mishram's imprisonment, yes.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/452-youtube-spoiler-stream-1/#e14527

Greg Andrew

Did Radiants who broke their oaths prior to the Recreance also result in deadeye spren?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/540-dragonsteel-nexus-2024/#e16777

Questioner

Did breaking a bond damage a spren before the Recreance? If so, was Ba-Ado-Mishram part of the natural healing process while being, or before becoming, Unmade?

Brandon Sanderson

Breaking a bond before the Recreance was… It hurt, but it was not long-term-damaging hurt. Ba-Ado-Mishram would definitely consider that they could help, but whether they actually could or not is a matter that you can dispute.

 

Edited October 10, 2025 by Trusk'our

[DoctaDajman]

It would be straight up terrifying if Nightblood learned how to take the investiture hidden inside of himself, or that of the user, and convert it to replicate F steel.

[XeGnome]

Is there any WoB or theory that what we are seeing is Nightblood becoming something greater than a Spren?  The original ‘intent’ in creating Nightblood was based on what the scholars saw spren do.   Could consuming more and more invested sources and learning from them ‘endow’ Nightblood with greater sapient function?  Could Nightblood gain an ascended soul / spiritweb?

[Treamayne]

5 hours ago, XeGnome said:

The original ‘intent’ in creating Nightblood was based on what the scholars saw spren do.

Not correct, technically. Nightblood was patterned after the Honorblades, not Spren Shardblades. WoB:

Spoiler

 

Quote

 

Fluffy (paraphrased)

When the Five Scholars traveled to Roshar, this happened post Recreance, so most Shardblades would have been dead, how did Nightblood gain sapience?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Shardblades weren’t the only Blades around that were active, there were Honorblades. Honorblades are self-aware, but do not manifest a spren in the Cognitive Realm.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 15, 2022)

 

Quote

uchoo786

I know that Nightblood is technically a shardblade (invested sword), but can one use it without being bonded to a Spren since on Roshar the only way to breathe is stormlight and use it is by being bonded to a spren? Would Nightblood also work like a shardblade, in that it severs the soul instead of consuming it when it touches a person?

Brandon Sanderson

Remember that the Honorblades do not require one to be bonded to a spren to use, or gain access to powers. Nightblood goes one step further, vaporizing and destroying on all three realms.

uchoo786

So, if I understand this correctly, Nightblood will act like an Honorblade and allow Szeth to breath in Stormlight? Will his surges be completely different than anything Roshar has seen before, or will his surges be those of the Skybreakers since Nightblood's purpose is pretty similar to theirs?

Brandon Sanderson

You'll have to wait and see.

/r/books AMA 2015 (May 18, 2015)

Hope that helps

[XeGnome]

2 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Not correct, technically. Nightblood was patterned after the Honorblades, not Spren Shardblades. WoB:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Hope that helps

Indeed it does sharpen my memory.   I still think Nightblood will gain ascension so to speak 

[Trusk'our he/him]

29 minutes ago, XeGnome said:

Indeed it does sharpen my memory.   I still think Nightblood will gain ascension so to speak 

Do you mean Ascension in the way of gathering so much Investiture that they transcend their physical body like a picking up a Shard would?

[XeGnome]

That is exactly it.   Nightblood is already heavily invested and ‘evolving’ … it seems a practical next step given time and influence