Szeth sits on the highest tower in the world—Urithiru—battling the whispers and screams of those he has killed. He avoids blinking to stave off the visions and draws comfort from bright sunlight and the tower’s emptiness above the clouds. He notes Urithiru’s strange design, its eastward glass windows, and remembers first coming here after his exile from Shinovar.

Reflecting on his recent duel with an impossible foe—a man who could draw in Stormlight—Szeth confronts the implications. He was made Truthless for warning that the ancient powers were returning, yet the existence of a Surgebinder contradicts what the Shamanate declared: that the Voidbringers and Knights Radiant were gone. He cries to the sun, asking if he has not obeyed, then fears that if the Shamanate were wrong, his oath and countless murders were meaningless.

Driven by that doubt, Szeth leaps from the tower and uses Lashings to travel, refilling his Stormlight from spheres left for him by villagers who revere him as a god. The journey will take days, but he commits to it, determined to find answers about the truth of his exile.

Resolved, Szeth chooses a new course: if he cannot secure certainty, he will kill—this time by his own decision rather than by the Oathstone’s command.