The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3)

by Brandon Sanderson

I have failed you. I have planned these caverns, knowing a calamity is coming, hoping that I might find some secret that would be of use should I fall to the thing’s scheming. Yet I have nothing. I do not know how to defeat it. The only thing I can think of is to keep it at bay by taking the power at the Well for myself when it returns. However, if you are reading this, I have failed. That means I am dead. As I write this, I find that prospect to be less tragic than I might previously have assumed. I would rather not deal with the thing. It has been my constant companion, the voice that whispers to me always, telling me to destroy, begging me to give it freedom. I fear that it has corrupted my thoughts. Though it cannot sense what I think, it can speak inside my head. Eight hundred years of this has made it difficult to trust my own mind. Sometimes I hear the voices and simply assume that I am mad. That would certainly be preferable.