In the comm of Tirimo, Essun returns home to find her three-year-old son Uche beaten to death. Meanwhile, catastrophic events are unfolding further north in the city of Yumenes.

Yumenes was once the seat of the Sanze Empire, and still retains considerable control over the rest of the Stillness, which "moves a lot […] Like an old man lying restlessly abed it heaves and sighs, puckers and farts, yawns and swallows” (2). Multiple civilizations have risen and fallen because of these constant earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which are periodically bad enough to cause a Season. Sanze has managed to survive through several Seasons, thanks in part to comms’s careful planning: “They’ve built walls and dug wells and put away food, and they can easily last five, ten, even twenty-five years in a world without sun” (8).

Now, however, a man and woman approach Yumenes: the man is an orogene, and the woman is a stone eater named Antimony who has assumed human form. The man remarks that Sanzed stonelore (ancient commandments and proverbs) was once inscribed in stone and therefore permanent. He asks whether the stone eaters will take over the world once he has destroyed it.