The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3)

by Brandon Sanderson

It was not yet complete. It needed more. Something else … something hidden. Marsh would find that something, and bring it to his master. The master that Vin had freed. The entity that had been imprisoned within the Well of Ascension. It called itself Ruin.

Vin was not fury. She was not terror. She had grown beyond those things.

She was a knife—Elend’s knife, the Final Empire’s knife. She didn’t fight to protect one man, but to protect the way of life he had created and the people he struggled so hard to defend.

One year ago, the woman Sazed loved had died. Now he wanted to know—no, he had to know—if the religions of the world had answers for him. He would find the truth, or he would eliminate each and every faith.

“I do not wish to speak of these things.” “What?” Breeze asked. “How can that be?” “If there were a God, Breeze,” Sazed said, “do you think he’d have let so many people be killed by the Lord Ruler? Do you think he’d have let the world become what it is now? I will not teach you—or anyone—a religion that cannot answer my questions. Never again.” Breeze fell silent.

“You were always the best of us, Sazed,” he said quietly. “Because you believed in something.”

“People struggle, Elend. Even a dying beast will keep fighting, will do anything to stay alive.”

The nature of the world is such that when we create something, we often destroy something else in the process.

“I thought him dead. I knew he was dying—I held that power, Sazed, power you can’t imagine. Power you’ll never be able to imagine. The power to destroy worlds and remake them anew. The power to see and to understand. I saw him, and I knew he would die. And knew I had the power to save him.” Sazed looked up. “But I didn’t,” Vin said. “I let him bleed, and released the power instead. I consigned him to death.” “How?” Sazed asked. “How could you do such a thing?” “Because I looked into his eyes,” Vin said, “and knew it was what he wanted me to do. You gave me that, Sazed. You taught me to love him enough to let him die.”

“You belong to the Church of the Survivor, Elend,” Vin said. “But you don’t have faith. Not as Sazed did. It was like … he knew everything would turn out all right. He trusted that something was watching over the world.”

The title of emperor carried with it only a single duty. To make everything better.

Kelsier had killed himself to secure freedom for the skaa. Marsh would do the same—and in doing so, hope to help save the world from destruction.

So he settled back. Content for the moment to watch her, feeling that somehow—despite their distance, despite his ignorance—he understood that feeling in her eyes.

How easily Elend spoke of hope and humor, as if being happy were simply a decision one made. Some people assumed that it was.

“That’s what I like about Allomancy, in fact. Or at least the theory of it. The skaa whisper about it, call it mystical, but it’s really quite rational. You can tell what an Allomantic Push is going to do as certainly as you can tell what will happen when you drop a rock over the side of this boat. For every Push, there is a Pull. There are no exceptions. It makes simple, logical sense—unlike the ways of men, which are filled with flaws, irregularities, and double meanings. Allomancy is a thing of nature.”

“There has to be a balance, Vin,” he said. “Somehow we’ll find it. The balance between who we wish to be and who we need to be.”

“But for now,” he said, looking to the canal, “we have to be satisfied with who we are.”

Vin looked up into his eyes, and they returned to the dance. Neither spoke; they simply let the wonder of the moment hold them. It was a surreal experience for Vin. Their army was outside, the ash was falling perpetually, and the mists were killing people. Yet within this room of white marble and sparkling colors, she danced with the man she loved for the first time.

You’re a compassionate man. That’s a weakness, but it isn’t the real problem. The problem is your inability to deal with your own compassion.”