Below is a chapter summary of The Hero of Ages, the third and final book in Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn series.
Prologue
Marsh struggles to kill himself, trying to pull the spike from his back to end his life. He is torturing a Terris prisoner, struggling against Ruin, which controls his mind. Eventually, Ruin wins over, and he continues on with his torture.
Chapter 1
A man named Fatren comments to a man named Druff that the mists have been staying later and later, their crops are stunted, and their town won’t have enough food to make it to the spring planting’s harvest. Fatren notes that he has barely a thousand soldiers, and they are facing down a koloss army of two thousand. Elend arrives and immediately starts ordering Fatren and his troops around. He tells Fatren that they must attack the koloss while they are making camp.d
Chapter 2
TenSoon is imprisoned in a cell by his fellow kandra, having no bones, being more of a grouping of translucent muscles. He is given a skull, but acid is dumped in his cell. The kandra are trying to kill him, but they know they have to give him a chance to speak first. He is able to use the skull to grow lungs and form a tongue, allowing him to request his own judgment. They stop pouring the acid and have to concede TenSoon’s wish for a trial.
Chapter 3
Elend uses his allomantic powers to help Soothe and Riot Lord Fatren’s men in battle with the koloss. Vin arrives on the scene as one of the “armies” Elend has promised Fatren. She starts fighting the koloss, then begins to control them, commanding them to attack each other. A steel inquisitor joins the fray, attacking Vin. She and Elend fight him off, and she is able to kill the inquisitor through her control of one of the koloss. Elend then uses his emotional allomancy to control all the koloss at once and get them to lower their weapons and surrender their fighting.
Chapter 4
Sazed and Breeze travel to Lekal City, intending to conquer it with a piece of paper rather than a sword. Sazed is busy studying various religions to disprove them. He and Breeze talk about Tindwyl’s death. King Lekal signs a treaty of surrender to Elend’s empire.
Chapter 5
Vin and Elend examine the body of the inquisitor they have killed and learn that the spike through his chest was made of pewter. Elend explains to Lord Fatren that they had to force the inquisitor out into the open, and that the only way to do that was to turn his own army of koloss against itself.
Vin and Elend search the ministry building of Lord Fatren’s city. They loot what they find in the here, and Elend informs Fatren that they have come to conquer them. He tells Fatren that he will give him protection under his rule and the freedom to rule themselves.
They discover a map in the ministry, just like the other places they have raided on their way here, which depicts where the Lord Ruler had his supplies stashed away. The last one is in Fadrex City, where Lord Ashweather Cett rules. They think this may be where the the Lord Ruler’s atium has been hidden.
Chapter 6
Marsh fights against the Ruin, and he notes how the inquisitors now have extra spikes in their chests and backs and are now no longer held back by the Lord Ruler’s control.
Chapter 7
TenSoon is given bones. Guards lead him out to the Trustwarren for his trial. He will argue his defense in front of the First Generation of kandra, in the kandra’s most sacred place, after a year of torturous imprisonment.
Chapter 8
Elend has made Fatren’s people stand in the mists for extended periods of time in order to inoculate them. They have taken Fatren’s people to the Central Dominance in order to save them.
Elend commands Demoux to form two task forces. He says to send one with barges back to Vetitan (Lord Fatren’s city) for the supplies they found in the ministry building, and the other to Luthadel with the refugees. He then informs Demoux to call a meeting of the crew, the agenda for which is “conquering the world, or at least what’s left of it.”
Chapter 9
TenSoon is led out to his trial.
Chapter 10
Vin meets up with Sazed. She struggles with being the one to give him advice now, instead of the other way around. She gives him an etching she found in Vetitan’s ministry building, asking him to have a look at it. Vin leaves him the picture of the plant that had once belonged to Mare, hoping to inspire hope in Sazed.
Chapter 11
TenSoon’s trial begins, and he is surprised that they question him about killing another kandra, rather than betraying his contract and spilling their secret to the humans. However, he figures out that they are trying to position him as a traitor first, so that what he says later in the trial will hold no merit.
TenSoon defends himself by saying that he did not break the Contract because he was serving a greater contract. He says the First Contract did not die with the Father, the Lord Ruler, but rather, it lived with Vin now. He says that she is their Mother now, and that the First Contract is with her. He says that he told her the secret of the Kandra because she has the right to know their secret as their Mother.
The First Generation ignores TenSoon’s pleas, and so the Second Generation will offer their judgment on their behalf. It is announced that his sentencing will occur in one month’s time.
Chapter 12
Vin tells Elend she is worried about the morale of the crew, and Elend tells her he will fix it. The crew studies a map together, noting where there is still going to be enough sunlight for crops to grow and what cities they still need to win over. They decide they must lay siege to Fadrex City in order to take it back from a man named King Yomen, and they will have to immunize the soldiers from the mists in the process.
The other city they need to win back is Urteau, which is controlled by skaa rebels. Elend decides to send Breeze and Sazed to Urteau. He tells Ham to send word to Luthadel and tell Penrod to have their scholars work on culturing plants that can grow in very little sunlight. He also tells Demoux to prepare the men to march tomorrow.
Chapter 13
Marsh sits in the koloss camp with a lot of free time to himself. He fights against the Ruin, and is ashamed of having given up when Kelsier didn’t. He decides that when the time came, he’d pull the spike from his back and kill himself in order to fight back against the Ruin and give the others the chance they need to succeed.
Chapter 14
Spook travels on the mission Elend and Vin have sent him on—to Urtea to gather as much information as he can about the Citizen and his government there. The Citizen will be meeting with his aides this night, and Spook intends to listen in on their conversation.
He spies on them, and notes that Beldre, the Citizen’s sister, is both sad and beautiful. He hears them talk about how their city won’t be handed to a nobleman like Elend, not after what Kelsier had did for them.
The Citizen, Quellion, says that only Urteau achieved Kelsier’s goal of a skaa-ruled nation, that they were the only city that burned the homes of the nobility and cleansed their town of the nobility and their society.
Chapter 15
Elend encourages Ham and the army to speed up, despite the danger of the mists. Human, one of the koloss Vin has captured, tells Vin that she is one of them and not like the others. He tells Vin he hates the mists because the mists hate him.
Chapter 16
Spook learns from Citizen’s spies that Elend’s team are on their way to Urteau. He embarks to learn as much as he can before they arrive. He briefly speaks with a thief lord named Durn, disguised as a beggar, who tells him cryptically to count the skulls.
The ruling skaa in the town burn a house down of noble-born people as a punishment. The Citizen moves about the city speaking to the people of the market. Spook tells Bedre (the Citizen’s sister) that he is going to kill her brother. The Citizen notices him talking to her, however, and Spook tries to escape. He winds up fighting the Citizen and several of his men, and three of them are allomancers. He is eventually knocked unconscious.
Chapter 17
Elend immunizes his army against the mists. He invokes the Survivor to spur on their confidence, but Demoux doesn’t like it. They speak about religion and Kelsier. Demoux falls to the mists.
Chapter 18
Sazed is troubled by his last conversation with Vin. He walks with one of the new captains, Goradel (the guard at Kredik Shaw who had come back to save Vin in The Final Empire). He arrives at the Pits of Hathsin, where the Terris now live. Terrismen find him and beg him to let them give him something warm to eat.
Chapter 19
Spook awakens to find himself in a house that is being burnt down. A voice guides him through the house, and helps him find a vial of a metal to burn. Spook swallows it and burns pewter, allowing him to escape. The voice that had helped him turns out to be Kelsier’s voice.
Chapter 20
TenSoon sits in his cage, observing the kandra around him. One of his friends, a female Kandra named MeLaan, comes to speak to him, and plants the idea in his head of escaping and rebelling against the Second Generation of kandra.
Chapter 21
Demoux survives the mists. Meanwhile, Vin and Elend travel by ship towards Fadrex, and Vin ponders the mystery of Ruin and The Deepness. She realizes that there is a logic to how it operates, and perhaps that can help her figure out what it really is.
Elend tells Vin how he is worried about becoming like the Lord Ruler, about how he has had to do ruthless things, at all costs, in order to achieve their goals. They then talk over the statistics of the men getting sick from the mists with a former inquisitor named Norden. They realize that in all cases, the number is exactly 16%, which is an odd anomaly.
Chapter 22
Sazed sits in a former guardhouse at the Pits of Hathsin, being attended to by Terris elders. They want him to be their leader, but he refuses. They speak of the mists, and Sazed learns that the Terrismen aren’t affected by the day-mists. He is determined to find out why.
Chapter 23
Spook recounts his youth and the day his father nearly killed him when he found out he was a servant in the Lord Ruler’s army. It was the same day that Clubs took him under his care, nearly ten years ago.
Chapter 24
TenSoon is given dogbones to wear to his upcoming sentencing trial. He is glad, because they’ve given him the means he needs to escape.
Chapter 25
Elend and the crew/army set up camp at Fadrex. He asks Vin to do some scouting in the city and to go after a list of informants and noblemen who may be willing to talk. He wants her to find out if there really is one of Lord Ruler’s caches hidden in the city.
Chapter 26
Spook hides out in a small, one-room lair he has found. He walks through the Harrows, a place where many of the skaa in Urteau come to regularly congregate. He drinks with them, listening in for interesting conversations. He laments his own shortcomings, and says out loud that he just wants to help, to which Kelsier’s voice responds that he can. Spook then becomes more determined to deliver Urteau to Elend’s empire.
Some of the skaa in the Harrows recognize Spook. Apparently, the thief lord he met earlier named Durn knew who he really was and had been telling the people his secrets. Spook flees into the night.
Chapter 27
Vin meets up with one of the informants in Fadrex, a man named Slowswift. She asks him what his weaknesses are, and he tells her that his two weaknesses are that he is a believer and has a lot of wealth. He says he has a vast amount of money that nobody knows where it came from, to which Vin realizes it is likely because he found a cache of atium.
She pays Slowswift, then moves onto the next informant, a man named Hoid. However, she gets a funny feeling and avoids him. She notices that she is being followed, and quickly jumps out of the city with her allomancy. She thinks maybe the Spirit had something to do with who was following her, since she felt aromantic pulses coming from that person, yet they had vanished abruptly.
Chapter 28
Elend and Vin discuss how to defeat the mists. She tells Elend he can help by figuring out the strange percentages of how many people the mists kill. But they agree not to talk about it directly, since Ruin can hear them. They decide to crash one of the balls King Yomen is holding in Fadrex.
Chapter 29
Sazed arrives in Urteau, and offers Quellion an alliance, saying it would be in his best interest because of the abundance of crops being grown in the Central Dominance. Quellion rejects this alliance.
He and Breeze then run into Spook. Spook tells them that Quellion hasn’t touched any of the Ministry buildings because he is afraid of inquisitors. He leads them down into a large cavern, where there is a massive cache of supplies the Lord Ruler has stored away. There is a lake in the cavern, too, where all of the canal water was being deposited. Sazed, Spook, and some troops set up base there.
Chapter 30
Elend and Vin attend King Yomen’s ball, intending to “shatter the people’s image of safety.” Vin mingles with the noblewomen, intimidating a woman named Lady Patresen. She tells her and the other noblewomen that she and Elend have come to the ball to give a warning to them, and that she suggests they take it. She then lets herself be led into the party for introductions.
Chapter 31
Spook, Breeze, and Sazed have spent three days in Urteau, moving their troops into the ministry building and taking up residence. Sazed says the purpose of the lake in the cavern they are staying at is to sustain the population with drinking water should a disaster occur.
Sazed studies the writings of the Lord Ruler in their new residence. Spook tells Sazed that he thinks Kelsier is still with them, watching over them. Sazed dismisses him. Spook points out that maybe he no longer wants to talk about religion because Tindwyl had never valued it. He ponders this possibility.
Chapter 32
Elend tries to persuade Yomen to come to an agreement on an alliance, but Yomen refuses. Elend mentions the storage cavern, and Yomen lies to him about it. Vin and Elend dance. They decide they will sneak into the cavern later and find out what the Lord Ruler had left there, then they will figure out what to do about the siege and the city based on that. They make a grand exit.
Chapter 33
TenSoon wears his canine bones to his trial. He proclaims that the other kandra cannot ignore him, that the world will soon end, and if they want to survive, they must act, be ready, and may soon need to command their people to accept something called the Resolution.
In the middle of the trial, TenSoon escapes, attacking a kandra named KanPaar (the foremost of the Second Generation) on his way out, and KanPaar’s delicate bones shatter. TenSoon says farewell to his home and what little honor he had left.
Chapter 34
Marsh strides through a small town in the shadow of Mount Tyrian, near Luthadel. He kills an allomancer he finds there because Ruin had been wanting an allomancer to drain. Marsh harvests the man’s power and draws it into a spike. The mountain he is near explodes into volcanic ash.
Chapter 35
Spook seeks out Durn and finds him in a room playing cards with his men. He accuses Durn of spreading rumors about his death, telling people that he was on the Survivor’s crew. Durn tells him he’s done that because he wanted people to know that Quellion had killed one of Kelsier’s own crew so that they would rebel against him. Durn tells Spook that if he and his friends can do something about Quellion, they will have his support.
Spook arranges for Durn and Breeze to meet. After Spook leaves, a man finds him, asking him to help with his sister, who is arranged to burn to death like Spook almost had. Spook agrees to help him.
Chapter 36
Cett criticizes Elend for going to Yomen’s ball. They talk about the siege, and decide to poison the wells within the city, but to warn the people about what they’ve done. They decide to bully the surrounding villages, but to not kill anyone.
Men take turns giving Elend reports. He delays attacking the city, opting to wait until he can sneak Vin into the storage cavern. However, the storage cavern is heavily guarded, and she is not sure she can get into it unless there is a ball or some distraction going on.
Elend talks to Demoux and learns that exactly 16% of those who fell to the Mists got better. Demoux seems to think Keslier is punishing his lack of faith, but Elend wonders if it’s the most devout who had gotten sick instead. His thoughts are interrupted by shouting.
Chapter 37
Yomen’s forces attack Elend’s army, but it’s a distraction. While the attack is happening, Vin encounters the mysterious mistborn who won’t reveal himself to her, yet again.
Yomen’s forces are able to destroy a bunch of the koloss stationed beneath a plateau nearby with their diversion tactic. Elend decides to move his remaining koloss closer to their camp. Vin riots the koloss named human, pushing him to show her how new koloss are born. They learn that koloss are created from spikes planted in humans.
Chapter 38
Spook has Franson, the man who came to him for help to save his sister, and his men dig a tunnel underneath the house that is to be burned down. He tells Franson that there is a way to get his sister out because there are ten people, yet nine skulls, when they do the house burning.
Meanwhile, Breeze and Sazed enjoy a drink, letting go of their anonymity. Breeze brings men to Sazed to ask him questions. Sazed tells them they shouldn’t form a rebellion yet, but to start thinking and talking with their friends, since they are influential men among the commoners of Urteau. The men tell Sazed and Breeze of another like Kelsier, one whom they call the Survivor of the Flames.
Chapter 39
TenSoon digs up OreSeur’s spikes from his, which contain his Blessing, that of Potency. He now is one of the most powerful kandra alive, with both the Blessing of Presence and Potency. He goes looking for Vin.
Chapter 40
Elend and the crew discuss the true nature of the koloss and hemalurgy, and they now have a better understanding of all the weapons the Lord Ruler had created using hemalurgy. He asks Noorden to plot out the movements of the koloss to learn more about how they operate without the control of an Inquisitor.
Demoux tells Elend the men distrust him for having gotten so sick from the mists. Elend tells him to organize a new company and to fill it with mistfallen. A messenger shows up from Luthadel, saying there have been riots in the city and the food stores have been pillaged. Elend thinks that Ruin has played a role in these riots, trying to draw them away from Fadrex.
Chapter 41
Spook tries to rescue a man’s sister from being burned alive in Urteau. He realizes Quellion had been sparing one of the prisoners each time he burns a house down in order to keep Allomancers. Spook fights off soldiers and saves the girl from the burning building, then runs away before more soldiers can attack him.
Chapter 42
Marsh arrives at Keep Venture. He uses the spike he had drawn an allomancer’s power within—one that he had killed outside the city—and drives it into Penrod’s heart. He has now made Penrod a weapon of Ruin’s, to be used like any other inquisitor.
Chapter 43
Vin and Elend move to break into the Canton of Resource. Elend challenges Yomen to a duel to create a diversion, while Vin sneaks into the building. Vin uses two of Slowswift’s men to take out some of Yomen’s guards and gets in.
Chapter 44
Elend attacks Yomen to find out if he is truly mistborn. Yoman responds by burning atium, showing that he truly is Mistborn. Elend escapes, only later to find out that this was all a part of Yomen’s plan to capture Vin. He was trying to keep Elend distracted instead of the other way around. As Vin gets trapped in a dark cavern, deep below the Canton of Inquisition, she finds the allomancer that’s been following her around, and it turns out that it’s been her deceased brother Reen all along.
Chapter 45
Vin accuses Reen of being a kandra. She learns, however that Reen is a manifestation of Ruin, that the voice in her head that she’s thought of as Reen has been Ruin all along.
Chapter 46
Breeze and Sazed await Spook to return to the lair in Urteau. Meanwhile, Spook pays a visit to Beldre, telling her she wants him to come with him because he is going to overthrow her brother. Beldre screams for her guards, and Spook flees.
He returns to the lair, telling Breeze that he needs him to start spreading rumors in the city about the truth of Quellion—that he is using allomancers, recruiting mistings from the people he arrests, rescuing them from his own fires, then holding their families hostage.
Spook then asks Sazed to find a way to reverse the process that brings the water into their lair, and have the canals flood the city streets instead. Spook plans to become a Kelsier-like figure, since he can survive the fires, and, he plans to “restore the water to the city streets,” giving the people miracles and a hero, while exposing Quellion as a hypocrite and a tyrant. This is all so that they can deliver Urteau to Elend.
Chapter 47
Elend broods over Vin’s capture. Cett’s soldiers have gone into the nearby villages and have found that the people in Yomen’s kingdom were starving and barely surviving. His soldiers didn’t have the heart to hurt them any further.
An altercation breaks out with Demoux’s men, and one of them punches Demoux. Elend decides the man must be executed, and commands Demoux to take the three hundred men that fell sick to the mists (the mistfallen) to Luthadel to give Penrod aid.
Chapter 48
Vin has been trapped in the cavern for a few days. She reads one of the texts from the Lord Ruler, and realizes he was just as lost as they were when it came to defeating Ruin. The door to her cavern cell opens.
Chapter 49
Sazed studies his engineering metalmind, and tells Breeze he believes he can flood the city. Spook informs them that the nobility have never been taken by the mists. Beldre shows up to plead with them to not attack her brother. They decide to capture her.
Chapter 50
Telden and a bunch of skaa servants show up in Vin’s cell. She tries to escape, but it is impossible. Telden has been asked to drug her so that he can safely transport her up above. If he is unable to, Telden believes they will all likely starve in the cavern. Vin agrees to take the drugged wine, but tries to flare the last of her pewter to try and stay awake. However, it is unsuccessful, and she passes out.
Chapter 51
Elend seeks out a large gathering of koloss to control them and use them against Yomen. He fights and kills several of them, and manages to get control of all of them, wondering where the inquisitor was that should have been controlling these koloss.
Chapter 52
TenSoon explores the streets of Luthadel in his wolfhound’s body, arriving at the warehouse where he had learned from OreSeur where Kelsier’s body had been buried. He imitates Kelsier, and approaches a couple of the warehouse guards for information. They tell him that Penrod has gone crazy, talking to himself and claiming to see the Lord Ruler standing beside him, and that he’s given a lot of strange orders lately—forcing the skaa to fight each other for food, and killing those who disagree with him. T
They also tell him that Elend and Vin have likely gone north to Urteau because of the Northern Dominance’s rebellion. TenSoon tells them to have the people find shelter underground if possible when the mists leave. He heads for Urteau.
Chapter 53
Spook talks to Beldre on the lakeshore of the cavern. He promises to try and save her brother if he can. Later, he meets up with Durn in the Harrows. He promises him a trade contract on all the canals and a title from the emperor for his ongoing help. Spook tells him he wants the Harrows dammed off, and that they will flood the canals during the evening when the markets are empty. He visits several bars with Durn, rallying the people against Quellion.
Chapter 54
Vin awakes, having been drugged long enough that the metals in her body have passed through her, taking away her allomantic abilities. Yoman speaks with her, asking about the bronze and silver earring her mother had given her. He tells her that he is going to put her on trial for having killed the Lord Ruler, and that he will be the judge for that trial.
Chapter 55
The mist creature approaches Elend. It tries to communicate, but Ruin changes the words it draws in the dust. He learns that’s why the mist spirit had been ripping out pages in the books Sazed was studying in the previous novel. Elend asks it several questions, learning it’s weaker than Ruin, and that it does not want him to attack Fadrex City.
Chapter 56
Beldre asks Spook to write her brother a letter to see if she can broker some kind of agreement, and Spook consents. Riots break out in Urteau, and a dangerous fire is started, threatening the whole city.
Chapter 57
Ruin takes up Reen’s form and stands in the small cell with her. She figures it has come to her to gloat—that it wants to make certain someone understands what it has accomplished. Here, she learns that Ruin has an opposite—Preservation.
Vin learns that Ruin had promised Preservation to work with him to create life, and that in return, Preservation had promised Ruin that he could destroy all life eventually. Ruin tells Vin that the end is coming in mere days, not weeks.
Chapter 58
Beldre receives a response from Quellion, denying to work with them on a compromise. He holds a speech in Urteau, and had been holding rallies and emphasizing the wonderful things he had done for the city.
Spook’s soldiers rush the stage of his speech, trying to force Quellion and his men to use allomancy for the crowd, which they’d been told would happen. Spook is left alone on the stage with Quellion, and begins to fight him, hoping he will reveal his allomancy.
Instead, it is Beldre who reveals her allomancy, and this is enough to satisfy the crowd. They call for Beldre’s head, and for Spook to be their new king. Kelsier’s voice urges him to take the power, but Spook refuses. He learns he has been implanted with an Inquisitor spike, long ago, and so has Quellion. He removes both Quellion’s and his own spike, much to the dismay of Kelsier’s voice.
The fires have now grown so large they threaten the whole city. They decide to use the water they were planning on flooding the city with to put out the fires. However, the building with its water stored up is on fire, too. Spook runs through the burning building, burning himself badly in the process, to release the water valve. He nearly dies in the process.
Chapter 59
TenSoon arrives in Urteau. He meets with Breeze and Sazed briefly. Sazed agrees to give him whatever provisions he needs for his mission to get to Vin.
Chapter 60
Vin attacks several guards in a feint escape. She then rubs her shirt with gruel grease, and is able to escape her manacles. However, Yoman is able to defeat her by burning atium.
Yoman decides to put her on trial then and there. He asks her about the Church of the Survivor and for Vin to tell him precisely what happened the night she killed the Lord Ruler. He seems to think the Lord Ruler is still alive, and wants to figure out where Vin fits into all of this. Vin notes that Yomen cannot kill her until he is certain of her place in his theology, and that’s why he kept her alive. Yomen has his soldiers take Vin away again.
Chapter 61
Elend brings the koloss force under his control back to their camp outside Fadrex. He plans a surprise attack for the next morning.
Chapter 62
Spook lays in bed with his burns, Sazed and Beldre at his side. Quellion has grown much more civil since his spike was removed, and now seems willing to consider an alliance with Elend.
Sazed discovers that TenSoon knows the words of the ancient Terris prophecies. After prying, he learns that several of Rashek’s friends, who had joined him at the Well of Ascension, were Feruchemists, and they hadn’t been killed.
Instead, the Lord Ruler offered them a deal: they could exchange their Feruchemy and humanity for immortality. They agree to the deal, and become the first generation of kandra. This helps Sazed regain his faith, as he realizes the Terris religion was never dead, since it had lived on through the kandra.
Chapter 63
Vin is back in her cell with Ruin. She tells the guards she has information for Yomen, and she is granted an audience with him. She tells Yomen the truth about the koloss and allomantic metals, and that the Lord Ruler had wanted them to meet all along in an attempt to sway him to her side.
Together, they realize that the five caches of supplies align heavily with the presence of metal deposits. Vin realizes that Ruin was using her all along to lead her to finding the Lord Ruler’s atium.
Marsh shows up and tells Yomen of the surprise attack Elend is planning, and Yomen orders the counterattack. Marsh is furious when he realizes Yomen doesn’t have any cache of atium hidden in Fadrex, however, as he is an agent of Ruin himself. Vin tells him that Elend won’t attack the city, since he is a better person than her.
Chapter 64
Spook awakens. He has an urgent message he needs to get to Vin. Goradel agrees to be the messenger for him. He tells Goradel the message must be delivered with a steel carving.
Chapter 65
Elend decides to call off his surprise attack. Vin figures that Ruin had brought Marsh along since the god had grown tired of trying to get the truth out of Yomen, and instead opted for someone Ruin knew Yomen would obey, like Marsh.
Yomen orders his men to attack Elend’s army. Elend commands his army to retreat. However, he loses control of the koloss, as they were under Ruin’s control all along. The koloss charge his own men.
Vin is able to steal a vial of metals from Marsh’s pouch, and uses her own earring that her mother gave her and steel-push it through his forehead. She is able to escape, and finds that there are still some koloss not yet under Ruin’s control—the ones that Elend had given her, Human at their lead.
She takes control of them, and Yomen finally orders his men to retreat into the city and allow Elend’s soldiers refuge inside as well. Marsh, somehow, is still alive, and attacks Vin. She is able to draw on the mists like she did against the Lord Ruler, and push on Marsh’s emotions. Marsh lets go of her and flees. Vin returns to Elend’s army, and tells them to retreat to the city, since Yomen will let them in.
Chapter 66
Sazed and TenSoon travel to the kandra homeland, TenSoon forming the body of a horse. TenSoon tells Sazed that he must convince the kandra how dire the situation is, and that he will have to convince them to do something difficult, though he doesn’t say what. Sazed arrives at the homeland, and asks to speak with the First Generation of kandra.
Chapter 67
Ruin’s koloss wait around, not attacking. Vin formulates a plan to put herself in danger in order to gain power from the mists again. She heads to Luthadel.
Chapter 68
Sazed speaks with the Second Generation of kandra. He tells them that he has information that has been changed by Ruin’s lies. He suggests that they compare their information on Ruin in an attempt to find out what Ruin’s plan is and what Ruin doesn’t want them to focus on. The First Generation of kandra show up and dismiss the others.
Chapter 69
Marsh runs into Goradel and kills him, reading over the message he was set to deliver from Spook to Vin. Spook’s message had said that the thing they are fighting is very real, and is able to take control of people and twist their thoughts, and not to trust anyone pierced by metal, since the smallest bit can taint a man. Marsh crumples the metal message up and heads toward Luthadel.
Chapter 70
Elend and Yomen visit the soldiers who had survived the initial clash with the koloss and offer encouragement. Yomen tells Elend there are sixteen allomantic metals, rather than fourteen.
Elend realizes the mist wasn’t making people sick, but rather Snapping them, bringing them power and making them able to fight. Ruin learns of this discovery immediately and gets ready to attack.
Chapter 71
Sazed speaks with the First Generation. They believe that if Ruin has escaped, then he will be coming for their atium. The kandra have been hiding the atium in their homeland all along. TenSoon heads to Fadrex to find Vin.
Chapter 72
Vin reaches Luthadel. Ruin’s inquisitors follow her there, where she hopes to doom herself in order to gain the powers over the mists again. She fights off several Inqusitors, and tries to draw on the mists, but is unsuccessful.
Marsh breaks several of her bones, then proceeds to torture her. However, he remembers his old self, and rips Vin’s earring free, having recalled Spook’s message that the smallest bit of metal could taint a man. Now, with the earring removed, Vin is able to draw in power from the mists again.
Chapter 73
TenSoon sees the mists flowing towards Luthadel, and changes his track from Fadrex back to Luthadel. Spook sees the wave of mists and orders Breeze to gather the people of Urteau and take them into the storage cavern. Elend and Ham fight off the koloss at Fadrex, and they see the waves of mist as well.
Suddenly, the koloss stop fighting them and leave for Luthadel. Vin fights off all of the inquisitors at once with her new mist powers, killing twelve of them and blowing up Kredik Shaw in the process. Vin begins pulling Marsh’s spikes out, but stops short of killing him, vanishing into the thin air.
Chapter 74
Fadrex survives the battle with the koloss, thanks to their newfound “mistfallen” allomancers. Elend tells Yomen to form crews and have them pick through bodies to search for the wounded, and to gather the people and begin moving them into the storage cavern. Elend heads to Luthadel, and Yomen gives him the bead of atium that he has always kept lodged in his forehead.
Chapter 75
Sazed is given a place to stay in a cave from the kandra, where he studies his sheets of metals. A kandra tells him that the mists are gone. The members of the First Generation join him, alone, on the floor of the Trustwarren, and ask him what he made of the mists being gone. The Second Generation interrupts, forming a coup against the First Generation and taking Sazed prisoner.
Chapter 76
Vin meets Ruin’s pure form, a large patch of shifting black smoke, and joins Ruin in godhood. In this form, she reaches out and plugs the ashmounts, smothering their ability to spray ash and lava. She wipes smoke and darkness from the atmosphere. Immediately, the land begins to burn in the absence of ash and mist.
She then spins the world to darkness. This causes tempests to sweep across the land, and it disrupts weather patterns, causing massive waves to erupt in the seas, wiping away several cities. All of this happens in a matter of minutes. Ruin tells her that Rashek had tried to do the same thing, and ended up creating the world as they knew it in the process.
Vin learns that Ruin has left a piece of himself behind—the atium—and that if he is able to recover it, then he can finally destroy all of the world. From her vantage point as a mist-spirit, she sees Elend fly into Luthadel.
Chapter 77
Elend searches through the rubble of Kredik Shaw for Vin. Much of Luthadel now lay in ruins. Elend finds Penrod’s corpse; he has committed suicide. His note says to look towards the Terris Dominance for his people.
Elend figures Ruin has maybe changed the text, and that perhaps Penrod had originally wrote to find the Terris people instead. So, Elend heads towards the Pits of Hathsin.
Chapter 78
The kandra MeLaan shows up with TenSoon to free Sazed from his imprisonment by the Second Generation. The Fifths arrive and TenSoon begins fighting them. Sazed joins in on the fight using his metal minds.
They are able to defeat them, and Sazed notices that the Firsts are still alive, albeit in the form of a gelatinous pile of bones. TenSoon says he can stall the other kandra in the Second Generation for long enough for the Firsts to regenerate their bodies. Sazed sits there and waits for them to regenerate.
Chapter 79
Elend arrives at the Pits of Hathsin, and asks to speak with the leaders of the camp. The First Generation of kandra return to their regenerated bodies. TenSoon, however, attacks Sazed, telling him that he cannot control it, that someone else is in control of him and wants him to kill Sazed. One of the First Generation of kandra announces that the Resolution has come. Sazed blacks out.
Chapter 80
Demoux has kept a force at the Pits to help the people sheltered there from Luthadel. He tells Elend that their food is running out. Elend orders Demoux to see if anyone around has any allomantic metals, and to pass them out to his soldiers and have them ingest them so they may have more allomancers in the upcoming battle with the koloss.
Meanwhile, the kandra have committed to the Resolution, with most of them removing their spikes and killing themselves, rather than allowing themselves to be taken over by Ruin.
However, some of them still have not obeyed the command and survive. One of the Seconds, KanPaar, is going to take the atium and deliver it to Ruin. Sazed uses his pewter ring to grow in size and bulk and block the escape from the Trustwarren in order to stop KanPaar.
At the same time, the koloss are approaching the Pits of Hathsin. Elend hears Vin’s voice, which directs him towards Sazed. He and Demoux are easily able to subdue KanPaar and the other kandra. They have found the atium, after all of this time.
Chapter 81
Vin fights with Ruin in the spirit realm. Elend commands Demoux to eat the atium they found, and he finds that his particular regiment of mistfallen men—about three hundred or so—have become atium mistings like Yomen. All of them take the atium and are able to fight off the koloss brilliantly.
Marsh finds Elend on the battlefield, burning atium himself. Vin appears before Elend as a mist spirit as he is fighting Marsh. However, Marsh is still able to kill Elend, burying an axe into his chest.
Before he dies, he tells Marsh that the atium is all gone, and Ruin is therefore defeated—Demoux’s soldiers had burned all of it fighting the koloss. Marsh decapitates Elend in his frustration.
Vin fully attacks Ruin, now with nothing to lose, and pulls Ruin into the abyss with her, bidding farewell to the world.
Chapter 82
Vin’s corpse and another leak out both light and dark mists. Sazed touches the smoke, and feels its great power. He realizes that he was the Hero of Ages all along, and takes up the great power leaking out of the corpses by slamming his arms into the mists. His flesh and bones evaporate, but as this happens, he taps his copperminds, dumping their entire contents into his expanding consciousness.
Using this knowledge, he recreates the geography of the world, and he puts the planet back into the correct place. He then restores the bodies of humans the way they were before they had adapted to their ashy environment. He restores all of the plants and animals back to life on the planet based on the religions he had studied in his portfolio, and uses Mare’s picture to create flowers again. Even the sky and landscape are as they had once been.
Epilogue
Spook has been healed from his burns. Ham is at his bedside with his family. Several people have been magically relocated from the cities they were once located in to be together.
Elend and Vin lay dead among a field of flowers. Spook finds a letter hidden in the grass next to their corpses. It’s from Sazed, explaining that he has left a book containing a short record of the events that led up to the world dying and being reborn.
Sazed explains in the letter to Spook that he has made him Mistborn, and healed the damage he did to his body from flaring tin so much, saying that it was a request from Kelsier. He asks Spook to watch over the people for him, and says that there are still two base metals and their alloys that no one knows about, and to see if he can figure out what they are. Spook tells Beldre that he thinks everything is going to be alright.
