I would guess that most people who read my works don’t know that the majority of the books are connected, with a hidden story behind the story. This pleases me. I have often said that I don’t want a reader to feel that they need to have my entire body of work memorized in order to enjoy a story. For now, Mistborn is just Mistborn, and Stormlight is just Stormlight. The stories of these worlds are at the forefront.

That isn’t to say there aren’t hints. Lots of them. I originally intended these cameo hints between the worlds to be much smaller, particularly at first. Many readers, however, grew to love them—and I realized I didn’t need to be quite as stingy with the hidden story as I was being.

I still walk a fine line. All of the stories you read are intended to be self-contained, at least within the context of their own world. However, if you do dig deeper, there is much more to learn. More secrets, as Kelsier would say.

This collection takes a step closer to the connected nature of the Cosmere. Each story is prefaced by an annotation from Khriss, the woman who has been writing the Ars Arcanum appendixes at the ends of the novels. You’ll also find star maps for each solar system. With things like this, the collection goes further than I’ve gone before in connecting the worlds. It hints at what is to come eventually: full crossovers in the Cosmere.

The time for that hasn’t arrived yet. If all this overwhelms you, know that most of the stories in here can be read independently. A few take place chronologically after published novels—and this is noted at the beginning of those stories, so you know how to avoid spoilers, if you want.

None of the stories in the collection require knowledge of the Cosmere as a whole. The truth is, most of what’s going on in the Cosmere hasn’t yet been revealed, so you couldn’t be expected to be up to date on it all.

That said, I do promise that this collection will provide not just questions, but at long last, some answers.

The Selish System

THE
SELISH
SYSTEM

THE SELISH SYSTEM

CENTRAL to this system is the planet of Sel—home to multiple empires that, uniquely, have remained somewhat ignorant of one another. It is a willful kind of ignorance, with each of the three great domains pretending that the others are mere blips on the map, barely worth notice.