Or perhaps not. Alonoe struck out into the jungle. Hopefully they’d all conclude that Ruin had indeed bested them. Kelsier waited until she was gone, then strolled over and picked up the large glass orb. It showed no discernible way of being opened, other than shattering it.

He held the glowing orb before him and shook it, gazing at the incredible, mesmerizing liquid light within.

That was the most fun he’d had in ages.

Part Six: Hero

PART SIX

HERO

Chapter 1

1

KELSIER ran across a broken world. The trouble had been apparent the moment he left the ocean, stepping back onto the misty ground that made up the Final Empire. Here he’d found the wreckage of a coastal city. Smashed buildings, shattered streets. The entire city seemed to have slid into the ocean, a fact he wasn’t able to fully piece together until he stood above the town and noticed the shadowy remains of buildings sticking from the ocean island farther up the coast.

From there it only grew worse. Empty towns. Vast piles of ash, which manifested on this side as rolling hills that he ran across for a time before realizing what they were.

Several days into his run home, he passed a small village where a few glowing souls huddled together in a building. As he watched, horrified, the roof collapsed, dumping ash on them. Three glows winked out immediately, and the souls of three ashen skaa appeared in the Cognitive Realm, their strings to the physical world cut.

Preservation didn’t appear to greet them.

Kelsier grabbed one of them, an aged woman who—as he took her hand—started and looked at him with wide eyes. “Lord Ruler!”

“No,” Kelsier said. “But close. What is happening?”

She started to stretch away. Her companions had already vanished.

“It’s ending…” she whispered. “All ending…”

And she was gone. Kelsier was left holding empty air, disturbed.

He started running again. He’d felt guilty leaving the horse behind in the forest, but surely the animal was better off there than it would have been here.

Was he too late? Was Preservation already dead?

He ran himself hard, the heft of the glass orb weighing down his pack. Perhaps it was the urgency, but his course became even more single-minded than it had been during his trip out. He didn’t want to see the failing world, the death all around him. Compared to that the exhaustion of the run was preferable, and so he sought it, running himself ragged.

He traveled for days upon days. Weeks upon weeks. Never stopping, never looking. Until …

Kelsier.

He jolted to a halt on a field of windswept ash. He had the distinct impression of mist in the physical world. Glowing mist. Power. He could not see that here, but he could sense it all around him.

“Fuzz?” he said, raising a hand to his forehead. Had he imagined that voice?