Kill one man. Get vengeance, but cause how many more deaths? He and Mare had fled this village. He’d later learned that Inquisitors had come, torturing many of the people they’d known here, killing not a few in their search for answers.

Kill, and they killed in turn. Get revenge, and their vengeance returned tenfold.

You are mine, Survivor.

He gripped at the door handle, but couldn’t do more than gain an impression of how it looked. He couldn’t move it. Fortunately, he was able to push against the door and force himself through. He stumbled to a stop, and was shocked to see that the room was occupied. A solitary soul—glowing, so it was a person in the real world, not this one—lay on the cot in the corner.

He and Mare had left this place in a hurry, and had been forced to stash some of their possessions in a hole behind a stone in the hearth. Those were gone now; he’d pilfered them after Mare’s death, following his escape from the Pits and his training with the strange old Allomancer named Gemmel.

He avoided the person and walked to the small hearth. When he’d returned for that hidden coin, he’d been on his way to Luthadel, his mind overflowing with grand plans and dangerous ideas. He’d retrieved the coin, but had found more than he intended. The pouch of coin, and beside it a journal of Mare’s.

“If I’d died,” Kelsier said, loudly, “if I’d let myself be pulled into that other place … I’d be with Mare now, wouldn’t I?”

No reply.

“Preservation!” Kelsier shouted. “Do you know where she is? Did you see her pass into that darkness you spoke of, in that place where people go after this? I’d be with her, wouldn’t I, if I’d let myself die?”

Again Preservation didn’t reply. His mind certainly wasn’t in all places, even if his essence was. Considering how erratic he’d been lately, his mind might not be completely in even one place. Kelsier sighed, looking around the small room.

Then he stepped back, realizing that the person on the cot had stood up and was looking about.

“What do you want?” Kelsier snapped.

The figure jumped. Had he heard that?

Kelsier walked up to the figure and touched him, gaining a vision of an old beggar, scraggly of beard and wild of eye. The man was muttering to himself, and Kelsier—while touching him—could make some of it out.

“In me head,” the man muttered. “Geddouta me head.”

“You can hear me,” Kelsier said.

The figure jumped again. “Damn whispers,” he said. “Geddouta me head!”

Kelsier lowered his hand. He’d seen this, in the pulses. Sometimes the mad whispered the things they had heard from Ruin. But it seemed they could hear Kelsier as well.