Ruin’s puppet. The thing he’d seen the force construct and dangle toward Vin.

“Hello, Kelsier,” Ruin said through the figure’s lips. “My colleague is unavailable. But I will convey your requests, if you wish it of me.”

“Stay back,” Kelsier said, flourishing the knife, reaching by instinct for metals he could no longer burn. Damn, he missed that.

“Oh, Kelsier,” Ruin said. “Stay back? I’m all around you—the air you pretend to breathe, the ground beneath your feet. I’m in that knife and in your very soul. How exactly am I to ‘stay back’?”

“You can say what you wish,” Kelsier said. “But you don’t own me. I am not yours.”

“Why do you resist so?” Ruin asked, strolling around the fire. Kelsier walked the other direction, keeping distance between himself and this creature.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kelsier said. “Perhaps because you’re an evil force of destruction and pain.”

Ruin pulled up, as if offended. “That was uncalled for!” He spread his hands. “Death is not evil, Kelsier. Death is necessary. Every clock must wind down, every day must end. Without me there is no life, and never could have been. Life is change, and I represent that change.”

“And now you’ll end it.”

“It was a gift I gave,” Ruin said, stretching out his hand toward Kelsier. “Life. Wondrous, beautiful life. The joy of the new child, the pride of a parent, the satisfaction of a job well done. These are from me.

“But it is done now, Kelsier. This planet is an elderly man, having lived his life in full, now wheezing his last breaths. It is not evil to give him the rest he demands. It’s a mercy.”

Kelsier looked at that hand, which undulated with the pinprick pressing of the spiders inside.

“But who am I talking to?” Ruin said with a sigh, pulling back his hand. “The man who would not accept his own end, even though his soul longed for it, even though his wife longed for him to join her in the Beyond. No, Kelsier. I do not anticipate you will see the necessity of an ending. So continue to think me evil, if you must.”

“Would it hurt so much,” Kelsier said, “to give us a little more time?”

Ruin laughed. “Ever the thief, looking for what you can get away with. No, a reprieve has been granted time and time again. I assume you have no message for me to deliver, then?”

“Sure,” Kelsier said. “Tell Fuzz he’s to take something long, hard, and sharp, then ram it up your backside for me.”

“As if he could harm even me. You realize that if he were in control, nobody would age? Nobody would think or live? If he had his way you’d all be frozen in time, unable to act lest you harm one another.”

“So you’re killing him.”