Mistborn: Secret History (Mistborn, #3.5)(2)

The mists coalesced into shapes. Those shadows he’d mistaken for hills were buildings, hazy and formed of shifting mists. The ground beneath his feet was also mist, a deep vastness, like he was standing on the surface of the ocean. It was soft to his touch, like cloth, and even a little springy.

Nearby lay the overturned prison wagon, but here it was made of mist. That mist shifted and moved, but the wagon retained its form. It was like the mist was trapped by some unseen force into a specific shape. More strikingly, the wagon’s prison bars glowed on this side. Complementing them, other white-hot pinpricks of light appeared around him, dotting the landscape. Doorknobs. Window latches. Everything in the living world was reflected here in this place, and while most things were shadowy mist, metal instead appeared as a powerful light.

Some of those lights moved. He frowned, stepping toward one, and only then did he recognize that many of the lights were people. He saw each as an intense white glow radiating out from a human form.

Metal and souls are the same thing, he observed. Who would have thought?

As he got his bearings, he recognized what was happening in the living world. Thousands of lights moved, flowing away. The crowd was running from the square. A powerful light, with a tall silhouette, strode in another direction. The Lord Ruler.

Kelsier tried to follow, but stumbled over something at his feet. A misty form slumped on the ground, pierced by a spear. Kelsier’s own corpse.

Touching it was like remembering a fond experience. Familiar scents from his youth. His mother’s voice. The warmth of lying on a hillside with Mare, looking up at the falling ash.

Those experiences faded and seemed to grow cold. One of the lights from the mass of fleeing people—it was hard to make out individuals, with everyone alight—scrambled toward him. At first he thought perhaps this person had seen his spirit. But no, they ran to his corpse and knelt.

Now that she was close, he could make out the details of this figure’s features, cut of mist and glowing from deep within.

“Ah, child,” Kelsier said. “I’m sorry.” He reached out and cupped Vin’s face as she wept over him, and found he could feel her. She was solid to his ethereal fingers. She didn’t seem able to feel his touch, but he caught a vision of her from the real world, cheeks stained with tears.

His last words to her had been harsh, hadn’t they? Perhaps it was a good thing that he and Mare had never had children.

A glowing figure surged from the fleeing masses and grabbed Vin. Was that Ham? Had to be, with that profile. Kelsier stood up and watched them withdraw. He had set plans in motion for them. Perhaps they would hate him for that.

“You let him kill you.”

Kelsier spun, surprised to find a person standing beside him. Not a figure made of mist, but a man in strange clothing: a thin wool coat that went down almost to his feet, and beneath it a shirt that laced closed, with a kind of conical skirt. That was tied with a belt that had a bone-handled knife stuck through a loop.

The man was short, with black hair and a prominent nose. Unlike the other people—who were made of light—this man looked normal, like Kelsier. Since Kelsier was dead, did this make the man another ghost?

“Who are you?” Kelsier demanded.

“Oh, I think you know.” The man met Kelsier’s eyes, and in them Kelsier saw eternity. A cool, calm eternity—the eternity of stones that saw generations pass, or of careless depths that didn’t notice the changing of days, for light never reached them anyway.

“Oh, hell,” Kelsier said. “There’s actually a God?”

“Yes.”

Kelsier decked him.

It was a good, clean punch, thrown from the shoulder while he brought his other arm up to block a counter strike. Dox would be proud.

God didn’t dodge. Kelsier’s punch took him right across the face, connecting with a satisfying thud. The punch tossed God to the ground, though when he looked up he seemed more shocked than pained.

Kelsier stepped forward. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re real, and you’re letting this happen?” He waved toward the square where—to his horror—he saw lights winking out. The Inquisitors were attacking the crowd.

“I do what I can.” The fallen figure seemed to distort for a moment, bits of him expanding, like mists escaping an enclosure. “I do . . . I do what I can. It is in motion, you see. I . . .”

Kelsier recoiled a step, eyes widening as God came apart, then pulled back together.

Around him, other souls made the transition. Their bodies stopped glowing, then their souls lurched into this land of mists: stumbling, falling, as if ejected from their bodies. Once they arrived, Kelsier saw them in color. The same man—God—appeared near each of them. There were suddenly over a dozen versions of him, each identical, each speaking to one of the dead.

The version of God near Kelsier stood up and rubbed his jaw. “Nobody has ever done that before.”

“What, really?” Kelsier asked.

“No. Souls are usually too disoriented. Some do run, though.” He looked to Kelsier.

Kelsier made fists. God stepped back and—amusingly—reached for the knife at his belt.

Well, Kelsier wasn’t going to attack him, not again. But he had heard the challenge in those words. Would he run? Of course not. Where would he run to?

Nearby, an unfortunate skaa woman lurched into the afterlife, then almost immediately faded. Her figure stretched, transforming to a white mist that was pulled toward a distant, dark point. That was how it looked, at least, though the point she stretched toward wasn’t a place—not really. It was . . . Beyond. A location that was somehow distant, pointing away from him no matter where he moved.