Kaladin, Syl, and Szeth reach the next Shin monastery and discover it protected by a crude fort and a crowded walled town. As they walk instead of flying, Kaladin and Szeth trade jokes about Shin and eastern customs, but the conversation turns serious when Kaladin openly describes his depression, shame, and gradual recovery. Because Szeth admits he feels awful all the time, Kaladin explains that improvement requires active resistance to destructive thoughts, like training for battle, and Szeth reluctantly begins considering the idea.

At the gates, the trio find that many of the residents are people the Shin would consider impure, and the townspeople explain they have been trapped there for two years. Other nearby towns have become violent, hide by day, and attack the wall at night, so the inhabitants have gathered together to survive. Szeth and Kaladin connect this pattern to the monasteries and suspect the Willshaper monastery is the source.

Szeth reveals that the Desolation has come and tells the townspeople that Shinovar failed its ancient duty to prepare for it. He and Kaladin then fly to the boarded-up monastery, where Szeth uses Division with unusual precision to break through the stone roof. Inside, instead of finding a hostile Honorbearer, they discover the dried corpse of Sivi-daughter-Sivi holding the Willshaper Honorblade beside a message carved in Shin: “I will not bow to him.”

Kaladin and Syl realize that unlike the Honorbearer at the earlier monastery, Sivi resisted the Unmade and died rather than submit, which explains why this region has not fallen into the same curse. Szeth opens the monastery to the town and publicly declares himself Szeth-son-Neturo, once Truthless and now a Radiant. He promises to travel from monastery to monastery, confront any corrupted Honorbearers, and restore the people as he did in the Stoneward region.

Afterward, Kaladin offers to split up, but Szeth admits Kaladin’s persistence has helped him and chooses to continue with him. Szeth argues to his highspren that cleansing Shinovar is just because Shinovar still lies under the Heralds’ ancient law and duty, unlike the rest of Roshar where singer claims hold precedent. When the usual whispers urging death return, Szeth tries Kaladin’s method by forming a “thought soldier” to answer them; the attempt only partly works, but it gives him enough hope to keep going, even as he privately resolves to finish cleansing Shinovar before ending his own life.