He couldn’t. That left Ruin far stronger than he was. Why had Preservation left the mists untouched like that? It was still part of him, of course, but it was like … like a diffused army, spread as scouts throughout the kingdom, rather than gathered for war.

Ruin wasn’t so inhibited. Kelsier could see his power at work now, revealed in ways that had been too grand for him to recognize before Ascending. Ruin ripped open the tops of ashmounts, holding them pried apart, letting death spew forth. He touched koloss all across the empire, driving them to murderous frenzies. When they ran out of people to kill, he gleefully turned them against one another.

He had hold of multiple people in every remaining city. His machinations were incredible—complex, subtle. Kelsier couldn’t even follow all the threads, but the result was obvious: chaos.

Kelsier could do nothing about it. He held unimaginable power, yet he was still impotent. But importantly, Ruin had to act to counter him.

That was an important revelation. He and Ruin were both everywhere; their souls were the very bones of the planet. But their attention … that could only be divided so far.

If Kelsier tried to change things where Ruin was focused, he always lost. When Kelsier tried to stop the ashmounts, Ruin’s arms ripping them open were stronger than his trying to seal them. When he tried to bolster Vin’s armies with a sense of encouragement, Ruin acted like a blockade, keeping him away.

In a desperate attempt, he made a push to approach Vin herself. He wasn’t certain what he could do, but he wanted to try battering Ruin away—push himself, and see what he was capable of doing.

He threw everything he had into it, straining against Ruin—feeling the friction of their essences meeting as he drew nearer to Vin, who was locked in a room within the palace of Fadrex. His essence meeting Ruin’s caused shocks through the land, trembles. An earthquake.

He was able to draw close. He could feel Vin’s mind, hear her thoughts. She knew so little—like he had known so little when he’d begun this. She didn’t know about Preservation.

The clashing pushed Kelsier’s essence away, ripping Preservation back from him, exposing his core—like a grinning skull as the flesh was torn free. A soul lined with darkness, but which was Connected to Vin somehow. Tied to her by the inscrutable lines that made up the Spiritual Realm.

“Vin!” he shouted, in agony, straining. The fight between him and Ruin caused the earthquake to intensify, and Ruin exulted in that destruction. It weakened his attention for a brief moment.

“Vin!” Kelsier said, getting closer. “Another god, Vin! There’s another force!”