Rand wakes up back on the cliff, and sees that Aginor is also dead. He’s lost his memory, but thankfully that doesn’t last long, and equally thankfully Jordan doesn’t try to screw around much before revealing Moiraine is alive. She reveals that Rand can use the One Power, and everything that happened last chapter was him using the Eye of the World, which is now drained. She’s known since Rand unconsciously used it to keep Bela energized so Egwene would be safe, quite a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming on its own. And it nicely explains that random lightning bolt, too. For now only Moiraine, Egwene, Nynaeve, and Lan know, so that’ll make for something pretty dramatic when the others find out. That’s going to be dragged out a while, isn’t it?
As for those others, they’ve found a few things at the bottom of the Eye. One of the seals that had held the Dark One prisoner, made of an unbreakable heartstone that was still broken somehow, the Horn of Valere, and the personal banner of Lews Therin. They’re all a mystery for now, but naturally the Horn has to go to Illian, so there’s one subplot for book two prepared. And so everyone looks forward to going home. Yeah, that’ll happen.
And so we enter summation mode, with the reveal of Rand’s powers pretty neatly filling in some odder bits of the story, while still leaving a complete mystery of what it means. Same with the three artifacts, as right now I can just barely make out traces of what the big picture is that resulted in them being buried here. And with the Dark One gone, where else is left for the series to go besides a few minor subplots that would seem like quite a letdown after this epic journey? Well, I’ve got thirteen more books to find out.