In the Mistborn series, Ruin is the god of chaos and destruction.
Nature as a God
As a god, Ruin is nearly omnipresent. It can observe the words you speak and the actions you take, but your thoughts are still safe from it. The Lord Ruler writes: “Be careful what you speak. It can hear what you say. It can read what you write. Only your thoughts are safe” (3.66).
Furthermore, there is a logic to Ruin, as if it operates on specific rules. Vin “felt a logic to Ruin. She didn’t understand that logic, but she could recognize its presence” (3.195) This knpowledge leads Vin to believe that Ruin is a force with rules; like a thinking creature, with sapience.
“It hadn’t been a creature, and not a person. It had been a force—a thinking one, but a force nonetheless. And forces had rules. Allomancy, weather, even the pull of the ground. The world was a place that made sense. A place of logic. Every Push had a Pull. Every force had a consequence” (3.196).
Later, through the strange powers she gains from the mists in Yomen’s throne room, Vin is able to touch Ruin’s own mind and discover that Ruin is fearful (3.620). So, Vin learns that Ruin is a god with very human-like emotions.
Characteristics
Vin learns that Ruin can either manifest in person or affect her from a distance, and this determines how specific Ruin is about things:
“When its actual presence was not with her in the cell, Ruin’s words were far more basic and vague” (3.527).
Furthermore, Ruin can’t read things in written in steel, because metal holds some kind of power over him (3.692)
Desires
Ruin has one very simple desire in the Mistborn series – to see the world come to its end (3.421).
His logic is that endings aren’t always bad, that all things, even worlds, must someday end. He says that all things are subject to their own nature, and that without Ruin, nothing would end, that nothing could end. “And therefore nothing could grow. I am life. Would you fight life itself?” (3.422).
He goes on to tell Vin that the end was ordained from the moment of the world’s conception, and that “There is a beauty in death—the beauty of finality, the beauty of completion. For nothing is truly complete until the day it is at last destroyed” (3.422).
Ruin’s other key motivation is reuniting himself with his body, which is the allomantic substance called atium. ThroughoutThe Hero of Ages, he manipulates all of the characters in order to get access to the atium (3.593). It is a piece of Ruin’s power that is out there, separated from him:
“There’s another piece of Ruin out there, Vin thought. Preservation is weaker because he gave up a piece of himself to create humankind. Not his consciousness—that he used to fuel Ruin’s prison—but an actual part of his power. What she had suspected before, she now knew with certainty. Ruin’s power was concentrated, hidden somewhere by Preservation. The atium. Ruin was stronger. Or he would be, once he recovered the last part of his self. Then he would be able to destroy completely—they would no longer be balanced” (3.693).
Tools
Ruin fuels Hemalurgy, the practice of stealing someone’s Allomantic power and grafting it onto someone else using a metal spike.
People who are pierced by Hemalurgic spikes can hear Ruin’s voice in their minds. The more spikes a person is pierced with, the more susceptible they are to Ruin.
For example, humans with one spike are only subtly affected by Ruin, whereas koloss, which are humans with four spikes, are under direct and absolute control of Ruin. Steel Inquisitors, who have eleven spikes, are incredibly susceptible to Ruin.
Despite the Lord Ruler creating the koloss and steel inquisitors, they are actually Ruin’s tools, and not his own:
“Hemalurgy is his power, Vin!” he said. “The Lord Ruler used it unwittingly! The fool! Each time he built an Inquisitor or a koloss, he made another servant for his enemy! Ruin waited patiently, knowing that when he finally broke free, he’d have an entire army waiting for him!” (3.608).
The Deepness vs. Ruin
During The Hero of Ages, Vin learns that The Deepness, or rather, the mist spirit, as she calls it, is different from Ruin. She notes that the “mist spirit is much weaker than Ruin” (3.248).
She has felt them both – Ruin is vast and powerful and can hear whatever they can say, being able to see all places at once. The mist spirit, however, is far fainter, more of a memory than a real force or power (3.248). It is later revealed that the Mist spirit is a part of Preservation, the god who gave up most of his power to imprison Ruin and protect the world from Ruin’s influence. This is the reason Preservation is much weaker than Ruin.
Ruin’s prior imprisonment meant that the Deepness—the mists—wasn’t related to Ruin, or at least the connection wasn’t simple. Vin notes:
“Letting Ruin go hadn’t been what had prompted the mists to start coming during the day and killing people. In fact, the daymists had started to appear as much as a year before she’d released Ruin, and the mists had started killing people in Luthadel some hours before Vin had found her way to the Well” (3.448).
As it turns out, the day mists killing people is actually an effect of Preservation. The god had been making an effort to Snap Mistings into existence to help defend against Ruin and prevent him from getting to his atium body.
The Deepness is a result of both the effects that Ruin and Preservation have on the mists.
Ruin and Preservation
When we are introduced to Ruin in The Hero of Ages, we learn that it controls people, like Marsh, but there is also an opposition to it.
“The force. Somehow it had control over Marsh—and it needed him and the other Inquisitors to be its hands. It was free—Marsh could still feel it exulting in that—but something kept it from affecting the world too much by itself. An opposition. A force that lay over the land like a shield. It was not yet complete. It needed more. Something else…something hidden. Marsh would find that something, and bring it to his master. The master that Vin had freed. The entity that had been imprisoned within the Well of Ascension. It called itself Ruin” (3.3).
We learn that this opposite force is Preservation, the god of preserving life. Ruin and Preservation are opposite powers, and at the end of the novel, Sazed draws them in as they threaten to annihilate one another.
“Yet because he was of one mind on how to use them, he could keep them separate. They could touch without destroying each other, if he willed it. For these two powers had been used to create all things. If they fought, they destroyed. If they were used together, they created” (3.742).
Drawing on both the power of Ruin and Preservation, Sazed becomes Harmony, ultimately balancing the two forces of the gods and blending the intents of both at the end of the series.
