They would have been horrified to find that here on this side, the lake—and actually the river as well—was inverted somehow. Opposite to the way the mists under his feet had a liquid feel to them, the lake rose into a solid mound, only a few inches high but harder and somehow more substantial than the ground he’d become used to walking upon.

In fact, the lake was like a low island rising from the sea of mists. What was solid and what was fluid seemed somehow reversed in this place. Kelsier stepped up to the island’s edge, the ribbon of Preservation’s essence curling past him and leading onto the island, like a mythical string showing the way home from the grand maze of Ishathon.

Kelsier stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and kicked at the ground of the island. It was some type of dark, smoky stone.

“What?” Preservation whispered.

Kelsier jumped, then glanced at the line of light. “You … in there, Fuzz?”

“I’m everywhere,” Preservation said, his voice soft, frail. He sounded exhausted. “Why have you stopped?”

“This is different.”

“Yes, it congeals here,” Preservation said. “It has to do with the way men think, and where they are likely to pass. Somewhat to do with that, at least.”

“But what is it?” Kelsier said, stepping up onto the island.

Preservation said nothing further, and so Kelsier continued toward the center of the island. Whatever had “congealed” here, it was strikingly stonelike. And things grew on it. Kelsier passed scrubby plants sprouting from the otherwise hard ground—not misty, inchoate plants, but real ones full of color. They had broad brown leaves with—curiously—what seemed like mist rising from them. None of the plants reached higher than his knees, but there were still far more than he’d expected to find here.

As he passed through a field of the plants, he thought he caught something scurrying between them, rustling leaves in its passing.

The world of the dead has plants and animals? he thought. But that wasn’t what Preservation had called it. The Cognitive Realm. How did these plants grow here? What watered them?

The farther he penetrated onto this island, the darker it became. Ruin was covering up that tiny sun, and Kelsier began to miss even the faint glow that had permeated the phantom mists in the city. Soon he was traveling in what seemed like twilight.

Eventually Preservation’s ribbon grew thin, then vanished. Kelsier stopped near its tip, whispering, “Fuzz? You there?”

No response, the silence refuting Preservation’s claim earlier that he was everywhere. Kelsier shook his head. Perhaps Preservation was listening, but wasn’t there enough to give a reply. Kelsier continued forward, passing through a place where the plants had grown to waist height, mist rising from their broad leaves like steam from a hot plate.