Mistborn: secret history

8

Kelsier was cloven asunder with a rending, pervasive pain – like that of a bone being pulled from a

socket. He tumbled, unable to see or think – unable to do more than scream at the attack.

He ended up someplace surrounded by mist, blind to anything beyond its shifting. Death, for real this

time? No… but he was very close. He could feel the stretching coming upon him again, coaxing him,

trying to pull him toward that distant point where everyone else had gone.

He wanted to go. He hurt so much. He wanted it all to end, to go away. Everything. He just wanted it to

stop.

He had felt this despair before, in the Pits of Hathsin. He didn’t have Preservation’s voice to guide him

now, as he had then, but – weeping, trembling – he sank his hands into the misty expanse around him and

held on. Clinging to it, refusing to go. Denying that force that called to him, promising peace and an

ending.

Eventually it stilled, and the stretching sensation faded away. He had held the power of deity. The final

death could not take him unless he wanted it to.

Or unless he was completely destroyed. He shuddered in the mists, thankful for their embrace, but still

uncertain where he was – and uncertain why Ruin hadn’t finished the job. He’d planned to; Kelsier had

felt that. Fortunately, Kelsier’s destruction had become an afterthought in the face of a new threat.

Vin. She’d done it! She’d Ascended!

Groaning, Kelsier pulled himself upward, finding he’d been hit so hard by Ruin’s attack that he’d been

driven far down into the springy, misty ground of the Cognitive Realm. He was able to pull himself out,

with difficulty, and collapsed onto the surface. His soul was distorted, mangled, like a body struck by a

boulder. It leaked dark smoke from a thousand holes.

As he lay there it slowly reformed, and the pain – at long last – faded. Time had passed. He didn’t know

how much, but it had been hours upon hours. He wasn’t in Luthadel. De-Ascending – then being crushed

by Ruin’s power – had flung his soul far from the city.

He blinked phantom eyes. Above him the sky was a tempest of white and black tendrils, like clouds

attacking one another. In the distance he could hear something that made the Realm tremble. He forced

himself to his feet and walked, eventually cresting a hill where he saw – below – that figures made of light

were locked in battle. A war, men against koloss.

Preservation’s plan. He’d seen it, understood it in those last moments. Ruin’s body was atium. The plan

was to create something special and new – people who could burn away Ruin’s body in an attempt to get

rid of it.

Below, men fought for their lives, and he could saw them transcending the Physical Realm because of the

body of the god that they burned. Above, Ruin and Preservation clashed. Vin did a much better job of it

than Kelsier had; she had the full power of the mists, and beyond that there was something natural about

the way she held that power.

Kelsier dusted himself off and adjusted his clothing. Still the same shirt and trousers he’d been wearing

during his fight with the Inquisitor long ago. What had happened to his pack and the knife Nazh had

given him? Those were lost somewhere on the endless fields of ash between here and Fadrex.

He crossed through the battle, stepping out of the way of raging koloss and transcendent men who could

see into the Spiritual Realm, if only in a very limited way.

Kelsier reached the top of a hill and stopped. On another hill beyond, distant but close enough to make

out, Elend Venture stood among a pile of corpses, clashing with Marsh. Vin hovered above, expansive and

incredible, a figure of glowing light and awesome power – like an inspiration for the sun and clouds.

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Elend Venture raised his hand, and then exploded with light. Lines of white scattered from him in all

directions, lines that drilled through all things. Lines that Connected him to Kelsier, to the future, and to

the past.