Could he use this man? Gemmel muttered like that sometimes, Kelsier realized, feeling a chill. I always thought he was mad.

Kelsier tried to speak further with the man, but the effort was fruitless. The man kept jumping and muttering, but wouldn’t actually respond.

Eventually Kelsier made his way back out of the room. He’d been glad for the madman to distract him from his memories of this place. He fished in his pocket, but then remembered he didn’t have the picture of Mare’s flower any longer. He’d left it for Vin.

He knew the answer to the questions he’d asked of Preservation just before. In refusing to accept death, Kelsier had also given up returning to Mare. Unless there was nothing beyond the warping. Unless that death was real and final.

Surely she couldn’t have expected him to just give in, to let the stretching darkness take him? Everyone else I’ve seen passed willingly, Kelsier thought. Even the Lord Ruler. Why must I insist on remaining?

Foolish questions. Useless. He couldn’t go when the world was in such danger. And he wouldn’t just let himself die, not even to be with her.

He left the town, turned his path to the west again, and continued running.

Chapter 3

3

KELSIER knelt down beside an old cookfire, no longer burning, represented by a group of shadowy, cold logs in this Realm. He found it was important to stop every few weeks or so to catch a breather. He had been running … well, a long time now.

Today he intended to finally crack a puzzle. He seized the misted remains of the old cookfire. Immediately he gained a vision of them in the real world—but he pushed through that, feeling something beyond.

Not just images, but sensations. Almost emotions. Cold wood that somehow remembered warmth. This fire was dead in the real world, but it wished it could burn again.

It was a strange sensation, realizing that logs could have wishes. This flame had burned for years, feeding the families of many skaa. Countless generations had sat before this pit in the floor. They’d kept the fire burning almost perpetually. Laughing, savoring their brief moments of joy.

The fire had given them that. It longed to do so again. Unfortunately, the people had left. Kelsier was finding more and more villages abandoned these days. Ashfalls went on longer than usual, and Kelsier had felt occasional trembling in the ground, even in this Realm. Earthquakes.

He could give this fire something. Burn again, he told it. Be warm again.

It couldn’t happen in the Physical Realm, but all things there could manifest here. The fire wasn’t actually alive, but to the people who had once lived here, it had been almost so. A familiar, warm friend.

Burn …