It rained down death upon the beasts. Kelsier couldn’t do anything but watch as the sudden attack killed thousands of them. He couldn’t feel any real regret when the koloss were destroyed, but it did seem a waste.

The koloss raged in frustration, unable to reach their enemy. Curiously, their souls started to appear in the Cognitive Realm.

And they were human.

Not koloss at all, but people, dressed in a variety of outfits. Many were skaa, but there were soldiers, merchants, and even nobility among them. Both male and female.

Kelsier gaped. He had never quite known what koloss were, but he had not expected this. Common people, made beasts somehow? He rushed among the dying souls as they faded.

“What happened to you,” he demanded of one woman. “How did this happen to you?”

She regarded him with a bemused expression. “Where,” she said, “where am I?”

In a moment she was gone. It seemed the transition was too much of a shock. The others showed similar confusion, holding out their hands as if surprised to find themselves human again—though not a few seemed relieved. Kelsier watched as thousands of these figures appeared, then faded away. It was a slaughter on the other side, stones crashing down all around. One passed right through Kelsier before rolling away, breaking bodies.

He could use this, but he would need something specific. Not a skaa peasant, or even a crafty lord. He needed someone who …

There.

He dashed through fading spirits and dodged between the glowing souls of creatures not yet dead, making for a particular spirit who had just appeared. Bald, with tattoos circling his eyes. An obligator. This man seemed less surprised by events, and more resigned. By the time Kelsier arrived, the lanky obligator was already starting to stretch away.

“How?” Kelsier demanded, counting on the obligator to understand more about the koloss. “How did this happen to you?”

“I don’t know,” the man said.

Kelsier felt his heart sink.

“The beasts,” the man continued, “should have known better than to take an obligator! I was their keeper, and they did this to me? This world is ruined.”

Should have known better? Kelsier clutched the obligator’s shoulder as the man stretched toward nothingness. “How? Please, how is it done? Men become koloss?”

The obligator looked to him and, vanishing, said one word.

“Spikes.”

Kelsier gaped again. Around him on the misty plain, souls blazed bright, flashed, and were dumped into this Realm—before finally fading to nothing. Like human bonfires being extinguished.

Spikes. Like Inquisitor spikes?

He walked to the slumped-over corpses of the dead and knelt, inspecting them. Yes, he could see it. Metal glowed on this side, and among those corpses were little spikes—like embers, small but glowing fiercely.