Mistborn: secret history

1

Kelsier ran across a broken world. The trouble had been apparent the moment he left the ocean,

stepping back onto the misty ground that made up the Final Empire. Here he’d found the wreckage of a

coastal city. Smashed buildings, shattered streets. The entire city seemed to have slid into the ocean, a

fact he wasn’t able to fully piece together until he stood above the town and noticed the shadowy remains

of buildings sticking from the ocean island farther up the coast.

From there it only grew worse. Empty towns. Vast piles of ash, which manifested on this side as rolling

hills that he ran across for a time before realizing what they were.

Several days into his run home, he passed a small village where a few glowing souls huddled together in a

building. As he watched, horrified, the roof collapsed, dumping ash on them. Three glows winked out

immediately, and the souls of three ashen skaa appeared in the Cognitive Realm, their strings to the

physical world cut.

Preservation didn’t appear to greet them.

Kelsier grabbed one of them, an aged woman who – as he took her hand – started and looked at him with

wide eyes. “Lord Ruler!”

“No,” Kelsier said. “But close. What is happening?”

She started to stretch away. Her companions had already vanished.

“It’s ending…” she whispered. “All ending…”

And she was gone. Kelsier was left holding empty air, disturbed.

He started running again. He’d felt guilty leaving the horse behind in the forest, but surely the animal

was better off there than it would have been here.

Was he too late? Was Preservation already dead?

He ran himself hard, the heft of the glass orb weighing down his pack. Perhaps it was the urgency, but his

course became even more single-minded than it had been during his trip out. He didn’t want to see the

failing world, the death all around him. Compared to that the exhaustion of the run was preferable, and so

he sought it, running himself ragged.

He traveled for days upon days. Weeks upon weeks. Never stopping, never looking. Until…

Kelsier.

He jolted to a halt on a field of windswept ash. He had the distinct impression of mist in the physical

world. Glowing mist. Power. He could not see that here, but he could sense it all around him.

“Fuzz?” he said, raising a hand to his forehead. Had he imagined that voice?

Not that way, Kelsier, the voice said, sounding distant. But yes, it was Preservation. We aren’t… aren’t…

there….

The crushing weight of fatigue hit Kelsier. Where was he? He spun about, looking for some kind of

landmark, but those were difficult to find out here. The ash had buried the canals; a few weeks back he

remembered swimming down through the ground to find them. Lately… he’d just been running….

“Where?” Kelsier demanded. “Fuzz?”

So… tired…

“I know,” Kelsier whispered. “I know, Fuzz.”

---

Fadrex. Come to Fadrex. You are close….

Fadrex City? Kelsier had been there before, in his youth. It was just south of…

There. Just barely visible in the Cognitive Realm, he made out the shadowy tip of Mt. Morag in the

distance. That direction was north.

He turned his back toward the ashmount and ran for everything he was worth. It seemed a brief eyeblink

before he reached the city and was given a welcome, warming sight. Souls.

The city was alive. Guards in the towers and on the tall rock formations surrounding the city. People in

the streets, sleeping in their beds, clogging the buildings with beautiful, shining light. Kelsier walked

right through the city gates, entering a wonderful, radiant city where people still fought on.

In the warmth of that glow, he knew he was not too late.

Unfortunately, his was not the only attention focused here. He had resisted looking upward during his

run, but he could not help but do so now, confronting the churning, boiling mass. Shapes like black

snakes slithered across one another, stretching to the horizon in all directions. It was watching. It was

here.

So where was Preservation? Kelsier walked through the city, basking in the presence of other souls,

recovering from his extended run. He stopped at one street corner, then spotted something. A tiny line of

light, like a very long piece of hair, near his feet. He knelt, picking at it, and found that it stretched all the

way along the street – impossibly thin, glowing faintly, yet too strong for him to break.

“Fuzz?” Kelsier said, following the strand, finding where it connected to another – it seemed a lattice that

spread through the whole city.