Vin realizes Kelsier is heading toward Kredik Shaw and insists on helping instead of returning to Clubs’s shop. Kelsier reluctantly agrees after Vin argues that being Mistborn is useless if he never lets her act like one. Before they go, Kelsier teaches Vin about atium, the rarest and most powerful known Allomantic metal, showing her how it reveals future actions and warning that enemy Mistborn may use it too.

After retrieving Kelsier’s coin pouch, Kelsier and Vin approach Kredik Shaw in the rain. Kelsier explains that their target is a hidden room in a tunnel complex, a chamber the Lord Ruler visits regularly and the same place Kelsier tried to reach three years earlier before being captured. Vin senses the Lord Ruler’s oppressive emotional influence around the palace, and Kelsier tells her to burn copper to shield herself.

Kelsier and Vin enter the palace violently, killing guards and hazekillers as they advance. Vin kills several men with coins and is shaken because Reen had always done the killing before. Kelsier tells Vin the guards are evil for defending the Final Empire, but Vin remains disturbed and continues to feel the palace’s wrongness as they push deeper inside.

In a mural-covered chamber, Kelsier opens the door to the inner structure and finds a Steel Inquisitor waiting. Two more Inquisitors enter, revealing the raid has been anticipated. One Inquisitor recognizes Kelsier and turns its attention to Vin, asking which nobleman fathered her; Kelsier wounds the Inquisitor badly enough to break free, then uses Allomancy to hurl Vin out of the chamber and orders Vin to run.

Vin flees through the palace while an Inquisitor pursues her. Her coins and metal weapons prove useless against the Inquisitor’s superior Allomancy, so Vin drinks Kelsier’s atium and uses a large book to block metal missiles. Atium lets Vin dodge a squad of soldiers, but another Inquisitor intercepts Vin and drives an obsidian-edged wooden weapon into her side, leaving Vin with a mortal wound.

Flaring pewter to stay conscious, Vin escapes into the rain and Pulls herself among the metal spires of Kredik Shaw. Vin briefly tricks the pursuing Inquisitor by Pushing away the metal-studded book, but the Inquisitor still tracks Vin through darkness and rain. Exhausted and bleeding, Vin falls onto a rooftop and hides until the Inquisitor finds her; just as Vin loses consciousness, a rescuer who is not Kelsier reaches Vin and carries Vin away.