The Eye of the World
The Eye of the World opens with a prologue set at the end of the Age of Legends: Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon, has killed everyone he loves, driven mad by the taint on saidin. When the Betrayer of Hope restores his sanity, Lews Therin's grief is so overwhelming that he draws enough of the One Power to destroy himself, raising Dragonmount in the process.
Three thousand years later, Rand al'Thor lives a quiet life in the isolated Two Rivers. When the Aes Sedai Moiraine and her Warder Lan arrive in Emond's Field, Trollocs attack on Winternight. Moiraine reveals that the Shadow is hunting three young men—Rand, Mat Cauthon, and Perrin Aybara—and they must flee. Tam lies wounded with fever and speaks of finding an infant on the slopes of Dragonmount, born to an Aiel woman who died in childbirth. The party is joined by the gleeman Thom Merrilin and Egwene al'Vere, and later by the Wisdom Nynaeve al'Meara.
Throughout the journey, Ba'alzamon haunts Rand's dreams, claiming to be the Dark One himself. In the cursed city of Shadar Logoth the party is scattered, and Mat takes a ruby-hilted dagger tainted by ancient evil that begins eating at him. Perrin is thrown together with Elyas Machera and discovers he can speak with wolves. Rand and Mat reach Whitebridge downriver with Thom, who stays behind to hold off a Myrddraal so they can run east.
In Caemlyn, Rand befriends the Ogier Loial and stumbles into the Royal Palace, where he meets the Daughter-Heir Elayne, her brother Gawyn, Queen Morgase, and the Aes Sedai Elaida, who Foretells trouble for Andor and recognises Aiel blood in him. The captive false Dragon Logain is paraded through the streets to the Palace.
Reunited at the inn, the party travels through the Ways to Fal Dara in the Borderlands, narrowly outrunning the soul-stealing Black Wind. There the peddler Padan Fain is caught, and Moiraine reveals that the Dark One has remade him into a hound that has been tracking the boys for years.
The party rides north into the Blight toward the Eye of the World, a pool of pure saidin set aside since the Breaking. Two of the Forsaken, Aginor and Balthamel, appear at the threshold. The Green Man kills Balthamel and dies in the act. Rand draws on the Eye, destroys Aginor, breaks the Trolloc army crossing Tarwin's Gap, and seemingly slays Ba'alzamon.
Beneath the emptied pool the party recovers the Horn of Valere, the Dragon Banner, and one of the seven seals on the Dark One's prison—now broken. Moiraine declares that the Dragon has been Reborn.