While eating with Kaladin nearby, Szeth debates whether to confess the mysterious Voice he heard in childhood and admits to himself that he has already hidden parts of his past, including details about his family. Before he can decide, he is abruptly pulled into Shadesmar and nearly panics in the sea of beads. Drawing on old Shin training and a small amount of Stormlight, Szeth stabilizes a platform beneath himself and discovers that Pozen-son-Nash, his former teacher and the bearer of an Honorblade, has brought him there for what Pozen calls a necessary test.

Pozen refuses Szeth a fair duel and immediately pits him against a second opponent, an unnamed Shin woman wielding the Edgedancer Honorblade. With no weapon and limited Stormlight, Szeth is forced to rely on Lashings, bead manipulation, and evasive movement while Pozen controls the terrain around him and even steers him toward dangerous Shadesmar spren. Szeth dives beneath the beads, finds his highspren, and orders it to locate a weapon he can manifest from the Physical Realm, but the spren returns with only a wooden spoon. As Szeth tries to reach solid ground along the river’s corresponding ridge, Pozen batters him with hostile currents and nearly crushes him against the obsidian wall.

While struggling underwater, Szeth hears Nightblood calling to him and finds the sheathed sword lodged near the ridge. When he surfaces with it, Nightblood manifests in Shadesmar not as black metal but as a radiant golden blade, revealing that the sword appears there according to how it imagines itself. Armed at last, Szeth climbs onto the ridge and begins to outfight the Edgedancer decisively. He blocks and dodges her attacks with expert precision, proving that her earlier contempt was misplaced and that, once properly armed, he is far beyond her.

Pozen then interferes directly, using the beads to trap Szeth’s legs while the Edgedancer attacks. Wounded and cornered, Szeth asks Nightblood for help and draws the sword, releasing a burst of destructive power that blasts the Edgedancer away, strips her of Stormlight, and leaves her reeling. When Szeth offers her a chance to stand down, she attacks again, and Szeth kills her with Nightblood. He then confronts Pozen, denounces the Shin corruption around them, and asks for answers, but Pozen insists Szeth still does not understand and turns the confrontation into one final lesson: if Szeth has truly learned, he must figure out how to Elsegate out of Shadesmar.

Rather than continue the duel, Pozen commits suicide on his own Honorblade, leaving Szeth stranded in Shadesmar with two Honorblades, little Stormlight, and no easy route to survival. After taking Pozen’s gemstones, Szeth senses fear and confusion from Pozen’s Honorblade and focuses not on technique but on purpose: saving Shinovar and learning how his father died. In response, the Honorblade helps him cut a slit through reality wide enough to escape. Szeth tumbles back into the Physical Realm, exhausted but alive, where Kaladin finds him lying in the grass beside the recovered blades. Szeth’s highspren praises him, and Szeth dryly mocks the spren’s earlier uselessness, ending the chapter with a cutting remark about ruining an illusion once the audience begins to believe it.