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The master that Vin had freed. The entity that had been imprisoned within the Well of Ascension. It called itself Ruin.
Sometimes he wondered if his immersion in the religions was merely a way of hiding from his pain. If that was so, then he’d chosen a poor way to cope, for the pain was always there waiting for him. He had failed. No, his faith had failed him. Nothing was left to him. It was all just … gone.
Yet one harrowing, undeniable fact remained. Mare had been right. She had chosen Kelsier over Marsh. And then, when both men had been forced to deal with her death, only one had given up. The other had made her dreams come true.
They washed across Vin, unbounded by the cavern’s echoes, an unreal sound that passed through things both living and dead.
“There is no need to hasten that end,” Vin said. “No reason to force it.” All things are subject to their own nature, Vin, Ruin said, seeming to flow around her.
Is it such a shameful thing, he thought, to be the man who likes to provide information for others, rather than the one who has to use that information?
“A man is what he has passion about,” Breeze said. “I’ve found that if you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you’ll just end up miserable.”
“Faith,” Spook said, “means that it doesn’t matter what happens. You can trust that somebody is watching. Trust that somebody will make it all right.”
“Vin, Vin. Why can’t you see? This isn’t about good or evil. Morality doesn’t enter into it. Good men will kill as quickly for what they want as evil men—only the things they want are different.”
“I guess you’ve won then,” she said quietly. “Won?” Ruin asked. “Don’t you understand? There was nothing for me to win, child. Things happen as they must.” “I see,” Vin said. “Yes, perhaps you do,” Ruin said. “I think that you just might be able to.”
“You are a piece of me, you know. Beautiful destroyer. Blunt and effective. Of all those I’ve claimed over this brief thousand years, you are the only one I suspect might be capable of understanding me.”
People with passion are people who will destroy—for a man’s passion is not true until he proves how much he’s willing to sacrifice for it. Will he kill? Will he go to war? Will he break and discard that which he has, all in the name of what he needs?”
“And so you worked together,” Vin said. “Both with a promise,” Ruin said. “My promise was to work with him to create you—life that thinks, life that loves.” “And his promise?” Vin asked, fearing that she knew the answer. “That I could destroy you eventually,” Ruin said softly. “And I have come to claim what was promised me. The sole point in creating something is to watch it die. Like a story that must come to a climax, what I have done will not be fulfilled until the end has arrived.”
How did men believe in something that preached love on one hand, yet taught destruction of unbelievers on the other? How did one rationalize belief with the lack of proof? How could they honestly expect him to have faith in something that taught of miracles and wonders in the far past, but carefully gave excuses for why such things didn’t occur in the present day?
“Elend won’t attack,” she announced. Six eyes—two steel, two flesh, two incorporeal—turned toward her.
“Elend won’t attack,” she said quietly. “Because he’s a better person than I am.”
It frustrated him. He knew he’d made the right decision. And in truth, he’d rather be in the city—almost certainly doomed—than be out there besieging it, and winning. For he knew that the winning side wasn’t always the right one.
For some reason, he had assumed that the truth would be different. The scholarly side of him argued with his desire for belief. How could he believe in something so filled with mythological clichés?
“It sounds to me, young one,” Haddek said, “that you’re searching for something that cannot be found.” “The truth?” Sazed said. “No,” Haddek replied. “A religion that requires no faith of its believers.”
That was how things often went. Some important decisions were made in public, on a battlefield or in a conference room. But others happened quietly, unseen by others. That didn’t make the decision any less important to Sazed. He would believe. Not because something had been proven to him beyond his ability to deny. But because he chose to.
They had outlasted so many problems and predicaments, upheavals and riots, that anything occurring on the outside must have seemed trivial. So trivial, in fact, that it was possible to ignore the prophecies of one’s own religion as they started to come true.
We create things to watch them grow, Ruin, she said. To take pleasure in seeing that which we love become more than it was before.
Every religion had clues in it, for the faiths of men contained the hopes, loves, wishes, and lives of the people who had believed them.
It wasn’t until that moment that Sazed understood the term Hero of Ages. Not a Hero that came once in the ages. But a Hero who would span the ages. A Hero who would preserve humankind throughout all times. Neither Preservation nor Ruin, but both. God.
