Time had become a strange thing to him since his death. He had no need for food, and didn’t feel tiredness beyond what his mind projected. With Ruin obstructing the sun, and the only light that of the misty ground, it was very difficult to judge the passing of days.

He’d been running … for a while. A long while?

He suddenly felt exhausted, his mind numbing, as if suffering the effects of a pewter drag. He groaned and sat down by the side of the canal mound, which was covered in tiny plants. Those plants seemed to grow anywhere water was present in the real world. He’d found them sprouting from misty cups.

Occasionally he’d found other, stranger plants in the landscape between towns—places where the springy ground grew more firm. Places without people: the extended, ashen emptiness between dots of civilization.

He heaved himself to his feet, fighting off the exhaustion. It was all in his head, quite literally. Reluctant to push himself back into a run for the moment, he strolled through Longsfollow. A town had grown up here around the canal stop. Well, a village. Noblemen who ran plantations farther out from the canal would come here to trade and to ship goods in toward Luthadel. It had become a hub of commerce, a bustling civic center.

Kelsier had killed seven men here.

Or had it been eight? He strolled, counting them off. The lord, both of his sons, his wife … Yes, seven, counting two guards and that cousin. That was right. He’d spared the cousin’s wife, who had been with child.

He and Mare had been renting a room above the general store, over there, pretending to be merchants from a minor noble house. He walked up the steps outside the building, stopping at the door. He rested his fingers on it and sensed it in the Physical Realm, familiar even after all this time.

We had plans! Mare had said as they furiously packed. How could you do this?

“They murdered a child, Mare,” Kelsier whispered. “Sank her in the canal with stones tied to her feet. Because she spilled their tea. Because she spilled the damn tea.”

Oh, Kell, she’d said. They kill people every day. It’s terrible, but it’s life. Are you going to bring retribution to every nobleman out there?

“Yes,” Kelsier whispered. He made a fist against the door. “I did it. I made the Lord Ruler himself pay, Mare.”

And that boiling mass of writhing serpents in the sky … that had been the result. He’d seen the truth, in his moment between time with Preservation. The Lord Ruler would have prevented this doom for another thousand years.