Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)

by Brandon Sanderson

After some thought, she decided that the concept of loving siblings was a little like the Allomantic pulse lengths she was supposed to be looking for—they were just too unfamiliar for her to understand at the moment.

There was always another secret.

Who, then, was she really? Vin the urchin? Valette the lady? Neither? Did any of her friends really know her? Did she even really know herself?

What will it be like, when this is all over? I will be just an ordinary man again. An unimportant man. It sounds nice—even more desirable than a warm sun and a windless sky. I am so tired of being the Hero of Ages, tired of entering cities to find either armed hostility or fanatic adoration. I am tired of being loved and hated for what a bunch of old men say I will eventually do. I want to be forgotten. Obscurity. Yes, that would be nice.

“Men are more resilient than that, I think. Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope.”

“You don’t stop loving someone just because they hurt you,” he said. “It would certainly make things easier if you did.”

“They hit me where it couldn’t have hurt worse. I’m going to do likewise.”

Walin stumbled back, confused. “Who … who are you?” “I am what you will soon be,” the stranger said, stepping up to the rift. The ribbons of his enveloping black cloak billowed around him, mixing with the mists as he turned toward Walin. “I am a survivor.”

You push me to seek revenge? he thought. Well, you shall have it!

“Belief isn’t simply a thing for fair times and bright days, I think. What is belief—what is faith—if you don’t continue in it after failure?” Vin frowned. “Anyone can believe in someone, or something, that always succeeds, mistress. But failure … now, that is hard to believe in, certainly and truly. Difficult enough to have value, I think.”