Mistborn: Secret History

1

Kelsier really wanted something to drink. Wasn’t that what you did when you got out of prison? Went drinking, enjoyed your freedom by giving it up to a little booze and a terrible headache?

When alive, he’d usually avoided such levity. He liked to control a situation, not let it control him – but he couldn’t deny that he thirsted for something to drink, to numb the experience he’d just been through.

That seemed terribly unfair. No body, but he could still be thirsty?

He climbed from the caverns surrounding the Well of Ascension, passing through misty chambers and tunnels. As before, when he touched something he was able to see what it looked like in the real world.

His footing was firm on the inconstant ground; though it was somewhat springy, like cloth, it held his weight unless he stamped hard – which would cause his foot to sink in like it was pushing through thick mud. He could even pass through the walls if he tried, but it was harder than it had been during his initial run, when he’d been dying.

He emerged from the caverns into the basement of Kredik Shaw, the Lord Ruler’s palace. It was even easier than usual to get turned about in this place, as everything was misty to his eyes. He touched the things of mist that he passed, so he could picture his surroundings better. A vase, a carpet, a door.

Kelsier eventually stepped out onto the streets of Luthadel a free – if dead – man. For a time he just walked the city, so relieved to be out of that hole that he was able to ignore the sense of dread he felt at Ruin’s escape.

He must have wandered an entire day that way, sitting on rooftops, strolling past fountains. Looking over this city dotted with glowing pieces of metal, like lights hovering in the mists at night. He ended up on top of the city wall, observing the koloss who had set up camp outside the town but – somehow – didn’t seem to be killing anyone.

He needed to see if there was a way to contact his friends. Unfortunately, without the pulses – those had stopped when Ruin escaped – to guide him, he didn’t know where to start looking. He’d lost track of Vin and Elend in his excitement at leaving the caverns, but he remembered some of what he’d seen through the pulses. That gave him a few places to search.

He ultimately found his crew at Keep Venture. It was the day after the disaster at the Well of Ascension, and they appeared to be holding a funeral. Kelsier strolled through the courtyard, passing among the glowing souls of men, each burning like a limelight. Those he brushed gave him an impression of their appearance. Many he recognized: skaa he’d interacted with, encouraged, uplifted during his final months of life. Others were unfamiliar. A disturbing number of soldiers who had once served the Lord Ruler.

He found Vin at the front, sitting on the steps of Keep Venture, huddled and slumped over. Elend was nowhere to be seen, though Ham stood nearby, arms folded. In the courtyard, somebody waved their hands before the group, giving a speech. Was that Demoux? Leading the people in the funeral service? Those were certainly corpses laid out in the courtyard, their souls no longer shining. He couldn’t hear what Demoux was saying, but the presentation seemed clear.

Kelsier settled down on the steps beside Vin. He clasped his hands before himself. “So… that went well.”

Vin, of course, didn’t reply.

“I mean,” Kelsier continued, “yes, we ended up releasing a world-ending force of destruction and chaos, but at least the Lord Ruler is dead. Mission accomplished. Plus you still have your nobleman boyfriend, so there’s that. Don’t worry about the scar on his stomach. It’ll make him look more rugged. Mists know, the little bookworker could use some toughening up.”

She didn’t move, but maintained her slumped posture. He rested his arm across her shoulders and was given a glimpse of her as she looked in the real world. Full of color and life, yet somehow… weathered. She seemed so much older now, no longer the child he’d found scamming obligators on the streets.

He leaned down beside her. “I’m going to beat this thing, Vin. I am going take care of this.”

“And how,” Preservation said from the courtyard below the steps, “are you going to accomplish that?”

Kelsier looked up. Though he was prepared for the sight of Preservation, he still winced to see him as he was – barely even in human shape any longer, more a dissolved bunch of weaving threads of frayed smoke, giving the vague impression of a head, arms, legs.

“He’s free,” Preservation said. “That’s it. Time up. Contract due. He will take what was promised.”

“We’ll stop him.”

“Stop him? He’s the force of entropy, a universal constant. You can’t stop that any more than you can stop time.”

Kelsier stood up, leaving Vin and walking down the steps toward Preservation. He wished he could hear what Demoux was saying to this small crowd of glowing souls.

“If he can’t be stopped,” Kelsier said, “then we’ll slow him. You did it before, right? Your grand plan?”

“I…” Preservation said. “Yes… There was a plan….”

“I’m free now. I can help you put it into motion.”

“Free?” Preservation laughed. “No, you’ve just entered a larger prison. Tied to this Realm, bound to it. There’s nothing you can do. Nothing I can do.”

“That–”

“He’s watching us, you know,” Preservation said, looking upward at the sky.

Kelsier followed his gaze reluctantly. The sky – misty and shifting – seemed so distant. It felt as if it had pulled back from the planet, like people in a crowd shying away from a corpse. In that vastness Kelsier saw something dark, thrashing, writhing upon itself. More solid than mist, like an ocean of snakes, obscuring the tiny sun.

He knew that vastness. Ruin was indeed watching.

“He thinks you’re insignificant,” Preservation said. “I think he finds you amusing – the soul of Ati that is still in there somewhere would laugh at this.”

“He has a soul?”

Preservation didn’t respond. Kelsier stepped up to him, passing corpses made of mists on the ground.

“If he is alive,” Kelsier said, “then he can be killed. No matter how powerful.” You’re proof of that, Fuzz. He’s killing you.

Preservation laughed, a harsh, barking noise. “You keep forgetting which of us is a god and which is just a poor dead shadow. Waiting to expire.” He waved a mostly unraveled arm, fingers made of spirals of unwound, misty strings. “Listen to them. Doesn’t it embarrass you how they talk? The Survivor? Ha! I Preserved them for millennia. What have you done for them?”

Kelsier turned toward Demoux. Preservation appeared to have forgotten that Kelsier couldn’t hear the speech. Intending to go touch Demoux, to get a view of what he looked like now, Kelsier brushed one of the corpses on the ground.

A young man. A soldier, by the looks of it. He didn’t know the boy, but he started to worry. He looked back at where Ham was standing – that figure near him would be Breeze.

What of the others?

He grew cold, then started touching corpses, looking for any he recognized. His motions became more frantic.

“What are you seeking?” Preservation asked.

“How many–” Kelsier swallowed. “How many of these were friends of mine?”

“Some,” Preservation said.

“Any members of the crew?”

“No,” Preservation said, and Kelsier let out a sigh. “No, they died during the intial break-in, days ago. Dockson. Clubs.”

A spear of ice shot through Kelsier. He tried to stand up from beside the corpse he’d been inspecting, but stumbled, trying to force out the words. “No. No, not Dox.”

Preservation nodded.

“Wh… When did it happen? How?”

Preservation laughed. The sound of madness. He showed little of the kindly, uncertain man who had greeted Kelsier when he’d first entered this place.

“Both were murdered by koloss as the siege broke. Their bodies were burned days ago, Kelsier, while you were trapped.”

Kelsier trembled, feeling lost. “I…” Kelsier said.

Dox. I wasn’t here for him. I could have seen him again, as he passed. Talked to him. Saved him maybe?

“He cursed you as he died, Kelsier,” Preservation said, voice harsh. “He blamed you for all this.”

Kelsier bowed his head. Another lost friend. And Clubs too… two good men. He’d lost too many of those in his life, dammit. Far too many.

I’m sorry, Dox, Clubs. I’m sorry for failing you.

Kelsier took that anger, that bitterness and shame, and channeled it. He’d found purpose again during his days in prison. He wouldn’t lose it now.

He stood and turned to Preservation. The god – shockingly – cringed as if frightened. Kelsier seized the god’s form, and in a brief moment was given a vision of the grandness beyond. The pervading light of Preservation that permeated all things. The world, the mists, the metals, the very souls of men. This creature was somehow dying, but his power was far from gone.

He also felt Preservation’s pain. It was the loss Kelsier had felt at Dox’s death, only magnified thousands of times over. Preservation felt every light that went out, felt them and knew them as a person he had loved.

Around the world they were dying at an accelerated pace. Too much ash was falling, and Preservation only anticipated it increasing. Armies of koloss rampaging beyond control. Death, destruction, a world on its last legs.

And… to the south… what was that? People?

Kelsier held Preservation, in awe at this creature’s divine agony. Then Kelsier pulled him close, into an embrace.

“I’m so sorry,” Kelsier whispered.

“Oh, Senna…” Preservation whispered. “I’m losing this place. Losing them all…”

“We are going to stop it,” Kelsier said, pulling back.

“It can’t be stopped. The deal…”

“Deals can be broken.”

“Not these kinds of deals, Kelsier. I was able to trick Ruin before, lock him away, by fooling him with our agreement. But that wasn’t a breach of contract, more leaving a hole in the agreement to be exploited. This time there are no holes.”

“Then we go out kicking and screaming,” Kelsier said. “You and me, we’re a team.”

Preservation seemed to condense, his form pulling itself together, threads reweaving. “A team. Yes. A crew.”

“To do the impossible.”

“Defy reality,” Preservation whispered. “Everyone always said you were insane.”

“And I always acknowledged that they had a point,” Kelsier said. “Thing is, while they were correct to question my sanity, they never did have the right reasoning. It’s not my ambition that should worry them.”

“Then what should?”

Kelsier smiled.

Preservation, in turn, laughed – a sound that had lost its edge, the harshness gone. “I can’t help you do… whatever it is you think you’re doing. Not directly. I don’t… think well enough anymore. But…”

“But?”

Preservation solidified a little further. “But I know where you’ll find someone who can.”

2

Kelsier followed a thread of Preservation, like a glowing tendril of mist, through the city. He made sure to look up periodically, confronting that force in the sky, which had boiled through the mists there and was coming to dominate in every direction.

Kelsier would not back down. He would not let this thing intimidate him again. He’d already killed one god. The second murder was always easier than the first.

The tendril of Preservation led him past shadowy tenements, through a slum that somehow looked even more depressing on this side – all crammed together, the souls of men packed in frightened lumps. His crew had saved this city, but many of the people Kelsier passed didn’t seem to know it yet.

Eventually the tendril led him out broken city gates to the north, past rubble and corpses being slowly sorted. Past living armies and that fearsome army of koloss, out beyond the city and a short hike along the river to… the lake?

Luthadel was built not far from the lake that bore its name, though most of the city’s populace determinedly ignored that fact. Lake Luthadel wasn’t the swimming or sport kind of lake, unless you fancied bathing in a soupy sludge that was more ash than it was water – and good luck catching what few fish remained after centuries of residing next to a city full of half-starved skaa. This close to the ashmounts, keeping the river and lake navigable had demanded the full-time attention of an entire class of people, the canal workers, a strange breed of skaa who rarely mixed with those from the city proper.

They would have been horrified to find that here on this side, the lake – and actually the river as well – was inverted somehow. Opposite to the way the mists under his feet had a liquid feel to them, the lake rose into a solid mound, only a few inches high but harder and somehow more substantial than the ground he’d become used to walking upon.

In fact, the lake was like a low island rising from the sea of mists. What was solid and what was fluid seemed somehow reversed in this place. Kelsier stepped up to the island’s edge, the ribbon of Preservation’s essence curling past him and leading onto the island, like a mythical string showing the way home from the grand maze of Ishathon.

Kelsier stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and kicked at the ground of the island. It was some type of dark, smoky stone.

“What?” Preservation whispered.

Kelsier jumped, then glanced at the line of light. “You… in there, Fuzz?”

“I’m everywhere,” Preservation said, his voice soft, frail. He sounded exhausted. “Why have you stopped?”

“This is different.”

“Yes, it congeals here,” Preservation said. “It has to do with the way men think, and where they are likely to pass. Somewhat to do with that, at least.”

“But what is it?” Kelsier said, stepping up onto the island.

Preservation said nothing further, and so Kelsier continued toward the center of the island. Whatever had “congealed” here, it was strikingly stonelike. And things grew on it. Kelsier passed scrubby plants sprouting from the otherwise hard ground – not misty, inchoate plants, but real ones full of color. They had broad brown leaves with – curiously – what seemed like mist rising from them. None of the plants reached higher than his knees, but there were still far more than he’d expected to find here.

As he passed through a field of the plants, he thought he caught something scurrying between them, rustling leaves in its passing.

The world of the dead has plants and animals? he thought. But that wasn’t what Preservation had called it. The Cognitive Realm. How did these plants grow here? What watered them?

The farther he penetrated onto this island, the darker it became. Ruin was covering up that tiny sun, and Kelsier began to miss even the faint glow that had permeated the phantom mists in the city. Soon he was traveling in what seemed like twilight.

Eventually Preservation’s ribbon grew thin, then vanished. Kelsier stopped near its tip, whispering, “Fuzz? You there?”

No response, the silence refuting Preservation’s claim earlier that he was everywhere. Kelsier shook his head. Perhaps Preservation was listening, but wasn’t there enough to give a reply. Kelsier continued forward, passing through a place where the plants had grown to waist height, mist rising from their broad leaves like steam from a hot plate.

Finally, ahead he spotted light. Kelsier pulled up. He’d fallen into a prowl naturally, led by instincts gained from a life spent on the con, literally since the day of his birth. He had no weapons. He knelt, feeling at the ground for a stone or stick, but these plants weren’t big enough to provide anything substantial, and the ground was smooth, unbroken.

Preservation had promised him help, but he wasn’t sure how much he trusted what Preservation said. Odd, that living through his own death should make him more hesitant to trust in God’s word. He took off his belt for a weapon, but it evaporated in his hands and appeared back on his waist. Shaking his head, he prowled closer, approaching near enough to the fire to pick out two people. Alive, and in this Realm, not glowing souls or misty spirits.

The man wore skaa clothing – suspenders, shirt with sleeves rolled up – and tended a small dinner fire. He had short hair and a narrow, almost pinched face. That knife at his belt, nearly long enough to be a sword, would come in very handy.

The other person, who sat on a small folding chair, might have been Terris. There were some among their population who had a skin tone almost as dark as hers, though he’d also met some people from the various southern dominances who were dark. She certainly wasn’t wearing Terris clothing – she had on a sturdy brown dress, with a large leather girdle around the waist, and wore her hair woven into tiny braids.

Two. He could handle two, couldn’t he? Even without Allomancy or weapons. Regardless, best to be careful. He hadn’t forgotten his humiliation at the hands of the Drifter. Kelsier made a careful decision, then stood up, straightened his coat, and strode into their camp.

“Well,” he proclaimed, “this has been an unusual few days, I can tell you that.”

The man at the fire scrambled backward, hand on his knife, gaping. The woman remained seated, though she reached for something at her side. A little tube with a handle on the bottom. She pointed it toward him, treating it like some kind of weapon.

“So,” Kelsier said, glancing at the sky with its shifting, writhing mass of too-solid tendrils, “anyone else bothered by the voracious force of destruction in the air above us?”

“Shadows!” the man shouted. “It’s you. You’re dead!”

“Depends on your definition of dead,” Kelsier said, strolling over to the fire. The woman trailed him with that odd weapon of hers. “What in the blazes are you burning for that fire?” He looked up at the two of them. “What?”

“How?” the man sputtered. “What? When…”

“… Why?” Kelsier added helpfully.

“Yes, why!”

“I have a very delicate constitution, you see,” Kelsier said. “And death seemed like it would be rather bad for the digestion. So I decided not to participate.”

“One doesn’t merely decide to become a shadow!” the man exclaimed. He had a faintly strange accent, one Kelsier couldn’t place. “It’s an important rite! With requirements and traditions. This… this is…” He threw his hands into the air. “This is a bother.”

Kelsier smiled, meeting the gaze of the woman, who reached for a cup of something warm on the ground beside her. With her other hand she tucked her weapon away, as if it had never been there. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties.

“The Survivor of Hathsin,” she said, musing.

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” Kelsier said. “One problem with notoriety, unfortunately.”

“I should assume there are many disadvantages to fame, for a thief. One doesn’t particularly wish to be recognized while trying to lift pocketbooks.”

“Considering how he’s regarded by the people of this domain,” the man said, still watching Kelsier with a wary eye, “I’d expect them to be delighted to discover him robbing them.”

“Yes,” Kelsier said dryly, “they practically lined up for the privilege. Must I repeat myself?”

She considered. “My name is Khriss, of Taldain.” She nodded toward the other man, and he reluctantly replaced his knife. “That is Nazh, a man in my employ.”

“Excellent,” Kelsier said. “Any idea why Preservation would tell me to come talk to you?”

“Preservation?” Nazh said, stepping up and seizing Kelsier’s arm. So, as with the Drifter, they could indeed touch Kelsier. “You’ve spoken directly with one of the Shards?”

“Sure,” Kelsier said. “Fuzz and I go way back.” He pulled his arm free of Nazh’s grip and grabbed the other folding stool from beside the fire – two simple pieces of wood that folded together, a piece of cloth between them to sit on.

He settled it across from Khriss and sat down.

“I don’t like this, Khriss,” Nazh said. “He’s dangerous.”

“Fortunately,” she replied, “so are we. The Shard Preservation, Survivor. How does he look?”

“Is that a test to see if I’ve actually spoken with him,” Kelsier said, “or a sincere question as to the creature’s status?”

“Both.”

“He’s dying,” Kelsier said, spinning Nazh’s knife in his fingers. He’d palmed it during their altercation a moment ago, and was curious to find that though it was made of metal, it didn’t glow. “He’s a short man with black hair – or he used to be. He’s been… well, unraveling.”

“Hey,” Nazh said, eyes narrowing at the knife. He looked at his belt, and the empty sheath. “Hey!”

“Unraveling,” Khriss said. “So a slow death. Ati doesn’t know how to Splinter another Shard? Or he hasn’t the strength? Hmm…”

“Ati?” Kelsier asked. “Preservation mentioned that name too.”

Khriss pointed at the sky with one finger while she sipped at her drink. “That’s him. What he’s become, at least.”

“And… what is a Shard?” Kelsier asked.

“Are you a scholar, Mr. Survivor?”

“No,” he said. “But I’ve killed a few.”

“Cute. Well, you’ve stumbled into something far, far bigger than you, your politics, or your little planet.”

“Bigger than you can handle, Survivor,” Nazh said, swiping back his knife as Kelsier balanced it on his finger. “You should just bow out now.”

“Nazh does have a point,” Khriss said. “Your questions are dangerous. Once you step behind the curtain and see the actors as the people they are, it becomes harder to pretend the play is real.”

“I…” Kelsier leaned forward, clasping his hands before him. Hell… that fire was warm, but it didn’t seem to be burning anything. He stared at the flames and swallowed. “I woke up from death after having, deep down, expected there to be no afterlife. I found that God was real, but that he was dying. I need answers. Please.”

“Curious,” she said.

He looked up, frowning.

“I have heard many stories of you, Survivor,” she said. “They often laud your many admirable qualities. Sincerity is never one of those.”

“I can steal something else from your manservant,” Kelsier said, “if it will make you feel more comfortable that I am what you expected.”

“You can try,” Nazh said, walking around the fire, folding his arms and obviously trying to look intimidating.

“The Shards,” Khriss said, drawing Kelsier’s attention, “are not God, but they are pieces of God. Ruin, Preservation, Autonomy, Cultivation, Devotion… There are sixteen of them.”

“Sixteen,” Kelsier breathed. “There are fourteen more of these things running around?”

“The rest are on other planets.”

“Other…” Kelsier blinked. “Other planets.”

“Ah, see,” Nazh said. “You’ve broken him already, Khriss.”

“Other planets,” she repeated gently. “Yes, there are dozens of them. Many are inhabited by people much like you or me. There is an original, shrouded and hidden somewhere in the cosmere. I’ve yet to find it, but I have found stories.

“Anyway, there was a God. Adonalsium. I don’t know if it was a force or a being, though I suspect the latter. Sixteen people, together, killed Adonalsium, ripping it apart and dividing its essence between them, becoming the first who Ascended.”

“Who were they?” Kelsier said, trying to make sense of this.

“A diverse group,” she said. “With equally diverse motives. Some wished for the power; others saw killing Adonalsium as the only good option left to them. Together they murdered a deity, and became divine themselves.” She smiled in a kindly way, as if to prepare him for what came next. “Two of those created this planet, Survivor, including the people on it.”

“So… my world, and everyone I know,” Kelsier said, “is the creation of a pair of… half gods?”

“More like fractional gods,” Nazh said. “And ones with no particular qualifications for deityhood, other than being conniving enough to murder the guy who had the job before.”

“Oh, hell…” Kelsier breathed. “No wonder we’re all so bloody messed up.”

“Actually,” Khriss noted, “people are generally like that, no matter who made them. If it’s any consolation, Adonalsium originally created the first humans, therefore your gods had a pattern to use.”

“So we’re copies of a flawed original,” Kelsier said. “Not terribly comforting.” He looked upward. “And that thing? It used to be human?”

“The power… distorts,” Khriss said. “There’s a person in that somewhere, directing it. Or perhaps just riding it at this point.”

Kelsier remembered the puppet Ruin had presented, the shape of a man. Now basically a shell filled with a terrible power. “So what happens if one of these things… dies?”

“I’m very curious to see,” Khriss said. “I’ve never viewed it in person, and the past deaths were different. They were each a single, stunning event, the god’s power shattered and dispersed. This is more like a strangulation, while those were like a beheading. This should be very instructive.”

“Unless I stop it,” Kelsier said.

She smiled at him.

“Don’t be patronizing,” Kelsier snapped, standing up, the stool falling down behind him. “I am going to stop it.”

“This world is winding down, Survivor,” Khriss said. “It is a true shame, but I know of no way to save it. I came with the hopes that I might be able to help, but I can’t even reach the Physical Realm here any longer.”

“Someone destroyed the gateway in,” Nazh noted. “Someone incredibly foolhardy. Brash. Stupid. Didn’t–”

“You’re overselling it,” Kelsier said. “The Drifter told me what I did.”

“The… who?” Khriss asked.

“Fellow with white hair,” Kelsier said. “Lanky, with a sharp nose and–”

“Damn,” Khriss said. “Did he get to the Well of Ascension?”

“Stole something there,” Kelsier said. “A bit of metal.”

“Damn,” Khriss said, looking at her servant. “We need to go. I’m sorry, Survivor.”

“But–”

“This isn’t because of what you just told us,” she said, rising and waving for Nazh to help gather their things. “We were leaving anyway. This planet is dying; as much as I wish to witness the death of a Shard, I don’t dare risk doing it from up close. We’ll observe from afar.”

“Preservation thought you’d be able to help,” Kelsier said. “Surely there is something you can do. Something you can tell me. It can’t be over.”

“I’m sorry, Survivor,” Khriss said softly. “Perhaps if I knew more, perhaps if I could convince the Eyree to answer my questions…” She shook her head. “It will happen slowly, Survivor, over months. But it is coming. Ruin will consume this world, and the man once known as Ati won’t be able to stop it. If he even cared to.”

“Everything,” Kelsier whispered. “Everything I’ve known. Every person on my… my planet?”

Nearby, Nazh bent down and picked up the fire, making it vanish. The oversized flame just folded up upon itself in his palm, and Kelsier thought he saw a puff of mist when it did so. Kelsier picked up his stool with one finger, unscrewed the bolt on the bottom, and palmed it into his hand before handing the stool to Nazh.

Nazh then tugged on a hiking pack, tied with scroll cases across the top. He looked to Khriss.

“Stay,” Kelsier said, turning back to Khriss. “Help me.”

“Help you? I can’t even help myself, Survivor. I’m in exile, and even if I weren’t I wouldn’t have the resources to stop a Shard. I probably should never have come.” She hesitated. “And I’m sorry, but I cannot invite you to come with us. The eyes of your god will be upon you, Kelsier. He’ll know where you are, as you have pieces of him within. It has been dangerous enough to speak here with you.”

Nazh handed her a pack, and she slung it over her shoulder.

“I am going to stop this,” Kelsier told them.

Khriss lifted a hand and curled her fingers in an unfamiliar gesture, bidding him farewell it seemed. She turned away from the clearing and strode away, into the brush. Nazh followed.

Kelsier sank down. They’d taken the stools, so he settled onto the ground, bowing his head. This is what you deserve, Kelsier, a piece of him thought. You wished to dance with the divine and steal from gods. Should you now be surprised that you’ve found yourself in over your head?

The sound of rustling leaves made him scramble back to his feet. Nazh emerged from the shadows. The shorter man stopped at the perimeter of the abandoned camp, then cursed softly before stepping forward and removing his side knife, sheath and all, and handing it toward Kelsier.

Hesitant, Kelsier accepted the leatherbound weapon.

“It’s a bad state you and yours are in,” Nazh said softly, “but I rather like this place. Damnable mists and all.” He pointed westward. “They’ve set up out there.”

“They?”

“The Eyree,” he said. “They’ve been at this far longer than we have, Survivor. If someone will know how to help you, it will be the Eyree. Look for them where the land becomes solid again.”

“Solid again…” Kelsier said. “Lake Tyrian?”

“Beyond. Far beyond, Survivor.”

“The ocean? That’s miles and miles away. Past Farmost!”

Nazh patted him on the shoulder, then turned back to hike after Khriss.

“Is there hope?” Kelsier called.

“What if I told you no?” Nazh said over his shoulder. “What if I said I figured you were damn well ruined, so to speak. Would it change what you were going to do?”

“No.”

Nazh raised his fingers to his forehead in a kind of salute. “Farewell, Survivor. Take care of my knife. I’m fond of it.”

He vanished into the darkness. Kelsier watched after him, then did the only rational thing.

He ate the bolt he’d taken from the bottom of the stool.

3

The bolt didn’t do anything. He’d hoped he’d be able to make Allomancy work, but the bolt just settled into his stomach – a strange and uncomfortable weight. He couldn’t burn it, despite trying. As he walked, he eventually coughed it back up and tossed it away.

He stepped to the transition from the island to the misty ground around Luthadel, and felt a new weight upon him. A doomed world, dying gods, and an entire universe he’d never known existed. His only hope now was… to journey to the ocean?

That was farther than he had ever gone, even during his travels with Gemmel. It would take months to walk that far. Did they have months?

He stepped off the island, crossing onto the soft ground of the misted banks. Luthadel loomed in the near distance, a shadowy wall of curling mist.

“Fuzz?” he called. “You out there?”

“I’m everywhere,” Preservation said, appearing beside him.

“So you were listening?” Kelsier asked.

He nodded absently, form frayed, face indistinct. “I think… Surely I was…”

“They mentioned someone called the Eyes Ree?”

“Yes, the I-ree,” Preservation said, pronouncing it in a slightly different way. “Three letters. I R E. It means something in their language, these people from another land. The ones who died, but did not. I have felt them crowding at the edges of my vision, like spirits in the night.”

“Dead, but alive,” Kelsier said. “Like me?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Died, but did not.”

Great, Kelsier thought. He turned toward the west. “They are supposedly at the ocean.”

“The Ire built a city,” Preservation said, softly. “In a place between worlds…”

“Well,” Kelsier said, then took a deep breath. “That’s where I’m going.”

“Going?” Preservation said. “You’re leaving me?”

The urgency of those words startled Kelsier. “If these people can help us, then I need to talk to them.”

“They can’t help us,” Preservation said. “They’re… they’re callous. They plot over my corpse like scavenging insects waiting for the last beat of the heart. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

“You’re everywhere. I can’t leave you.”

“No. They’re beyond me. I… I cannot depart this land. I’m too Invested in it, in every rock and leaf.” He pulsed, his already indistinct form spreading thinner. “We… grow attached easily, and it takes one who is particularly dedicated to leave.”

“And Ruin?” Kelsier said, turning toward the west. “If he destroys everything, would he be able to escape?”

“Yes,” Preservation said, very softly. “He could go then. But Kelsier, you can’t abandon me. We… we’re a team, right?”

Kelsier rested his hand on the creature’s shoulder. Once so confident, now little more than a smudge in the air. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If I’m going to stop that thing, I’ll need some kind of help.”

“You pity me.”

“I pity anyone who’s not me, Fuzz. A hazard of being the man I am. But you can do this. Keep an eye on Ruin, and try to get word to Vin and that nobleman of hers.”

“Pity,” Preservation repeated. “Is that… is that what I’ve become? Yes… Yes, it is.”

He reached up with a vaguely outlined hand and seized Kelsier’s arm from underneath. Kelsier gasped, then cut off as Preservation grabbed him by the back of the neck with his other hand, locking his gaze with Kelsier’s. Those eyes snapped into focus, fuzziness becoming suddenly distinct. A glow burst from them, silvery white, bathing Kelsier and blinding him.

Everything else was vaporized; nothing could withstand that terrible, wonderful light. Kelsier lost form, thought, very being. He transcended self and entered a place of flowing light. Ribbons of it exploded from him, and though he tried to scream, he had no voice.

Time didn’t pass; time had no relevance here. It was not a place. Location had no relevance. Only Connection, person to person, man to world, Kelsier to god.

And that god was everything. The thing he had pitied was the very ground Kelsier walked upon, the air, the metals – his own soul. Preservation was everywhere. Beside it, Kelsier was insignificant. An afterthought.

The vision faded. Kelsier stumbled away from Preservation, who stood, placid, a blur in the air – but a representation of so much more. Kelsier put his hand to his chest and was pleased, for a reason he couldn’t explain, to find that his heart was beating. His soul was learning to imitate a body, and somehow having a racing heart was comforting.

“I suppose I deserved that,” Kelsier said. “Be careful how you use those visions, Fuzz. Reality isn’t particularly healthy for a man’s ego.”

“I would call it very healthy,” Preservation replied.

“I saw everything,” Kelsier mumbled. “Everyone, everything. My Connection to them, and… and…”

Spreading into the future, he thought, grasping at an explanation. Possibilities, so many possibilities… like atium.

“Yes,” Preservation said, sounding exhausted. “It can be trying to recognize one’s true place in things. Few can handle the–”

“Send me back,” Kelsier said, scrambling up to Preservation, taking him by the arms.

“What?”

“Send me back. I need to see that again.”

“Your mind is too fragile. It will break.”

“I broke that damn thing years ago, Fuzz. Do it. Please.”

Preservation hesitantly gripped him, and this time his eyes took longer to start glowing. They flashed, his form trembling, and for a moment Kelsier thought the god would dissipate entirely.

Then the glow spurted to life, and in an instant Kelsier was consumed. This time he forced himself to look away from Preservation – though it was less a matter of looking, and more a matter of trying to sort through the horrible overload of information and sensation that assaulted him.

Unfortunately, in turning his attention away from Preservation he risked giving it to something else – something equally demanding. There was a second god here, black and terrible, the thing with the spines and spidery legs, sprouting from dark mists and reaching into everything throughout the land.

Including Kelsier.

In fact, his ties to Preservation were trivial by comparison to these hundreds of black fingers which attached him to that thing Beyond. He sensed a powerful satisfaction from it, along with an idea. Not words, just an undeniable fact.

You are mine, Survivor.

Kelsier rebelled at the thought, but in this place of perfect light, truth had to be acknowledged.

Straining, soul crumbling before that terrible reality, Kelsier turned toward the tendrils of light spreading into the distance. Possibilities upon possibilities, compounded upon one another. Infinite, overwhelming. The future.

He dropped out of the vision again, and this time fell to his knees panting. The glow faded, and he was again on the banks of Lake Luthadel. Preservation settled down beside him and rested his hand on Kelsier’s back.

“I can’t stop him,” Kelsier whispered.

“I know,” Preservation said.

“I could see thousands upon thousands of possibilities. In none of them did I defeat that thing.”

“The ribbons of the future are never as useful as… as they should be,” Preservation said. “I rode them much, in the past. It’s too hard to see what is actually likely, and what is just a fragile… fragile, distant maybe….”

“I can’t stop it,” Kelsier whispered. “I’m too like it. Everything I do serves it.” Kelsier looked up, smiling.

“It broke you,” Preservation said.

“No, Fuzz.” Kelsier laughed, standing. “No. I can’t stop it. No matter what I do, I can’t stop it.” He looked down at Preservation. “But she can.”

“He knows this. You were right. He has been preparing her, infusing her.”

“She can beat it.”

“A frail possibility,” Preservation said. “A false promise.”

“No,” Kelsier said softly. “A hope.”

He held his hand out. Preservation took it and let Kelsier pull him to his feet. God nodded. “A hope. What is our plan?”

“I continue to the west,” Kelsier said. “I saw, in the possibilities…”

“Do not trust what you saw,” Preservation said, sounding far more firm than he had earlier. “It takes an infinite mind to even begin to glean information from those tendrils of the future. Even then you are likely to be wrong.”

“The path I saw started by me going to the west,” Kelsier said. “It’s all I can think to do. Unless you have a better suggestion.”

Preservation shook his head.

“You need to stay here, fight him off, resist – and try to get through to Vin. If not her, then Sazed.”

“He… is not well.”

Kelsier cocked his head. “Hurt in the fighting?”

“Worse. Ruin tries to break him.”

Damn. But what could he do, except continue with his plan? “Do what you can,” Kelsier said. “I’ll seek these people to the west.”

“They won’t help.”

“I’m not going to ask for their help,” Kelsier said, then smiled. “I’m going to rob them.”