Kelsier walked back to the others, passing a figure in Terris robes standing with hands clasped before him, draping sleeves covering them. “Hey,” Kelsier said, then looked at the sky and the glowing figure there. “Aren’t you…”

“Part of me is,” Sazed replied. He looked to Vin and Elend and held out his hands, one toward each of them. “Thank you both for this new beginning. I have healed your bodies. You can return to them, if you wish.”

Vin looked to Elend. To Kelsier’s horror, he had begun to stretch out. He turned toward something Kelsier couldn’t see, something Beyond, and smiled, then stepped in that direction.

“I don’t think it works that way, Saze,” Vin said, then kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.” She turned, took Elend’s hand, and began to stretch toward that unseen, distant point.

“Vin!” Kelsier cried, grabbing her other hand, clutching it. “No, Vin. You held the power. You don’t have to go.”

“I know,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at him.

“Please,” Kelsier said. “Don’t go. Stay. With me.”

“Ah, Kelsier,” she said. “You have a lot to learn about love, don’t you?”

“I know love, Vin. Everything I’ve done—the fall of the empire, the power I’ve given up—that was all about love.”

She smiled. “Kelsier. You are a great man, and should be proud of what you’ve done. And you do love. I know you do. But at the same time, I don’t think you understand it.”

She turned her gaze toward Elend, who was vanishing, only his hand—in hers—still visible. “Thank you, Kelsier,” she whispered, looking back at him, “for all you have done. Your sacrifice was amazing. But to do the things you had to do, to defend the world, you had to become something. Something that worries me.

“Once, you taught me an important lesson about friendship. I need to return that lesson. A last gift. You need to know, you need to ask. How much of what you’ve done was about love, and how much was about proving something? That you hadn’t been betrayed, bested, beaten? Can you answer honestly, Kelsier?”

He met her eyes, and saw the implicit question.

How much was about us? it asked. And how much was about you?

“I don’t know,” he said to her.

She squeezed his hand and smiled—that smile she’d never have been able to give when he first found her.

That, more than anything, made him proud of her.

“Thank you,” she whispered again.

Then she let go of his hand and followed Elend into the Beyond.

Chapter 9

9

THE land shook and groaned as it died, and was reborn.

Kelsier walked it, hands shoved in his pockets. He strolled through the end of the world, power spraying in all directions, giving him visions of all three Realms.