Mistborn: Secret History
Mistborn: Secret History is a companion story to the original Mistborn Trilogy. As such, it contains HUGE SPOILERS for the books Mistborn: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages. It also contains very minor spoilers for the book The Bands of Mourning.
This story builds upon the characterization, events, and worldbuilding of the original trilogy. Reading it without that background will be a confusing process at best. In short, this isn’t the place to start your journey into Mistborn (though if you have read the trilogy—but it has been a while—you should be just fine, so long as you remember the characters and the general plot of the books). Saying anything more here risks revealing too much. Even knowledge of this story’s existence is, in a way, a spoiler.
There’s always another secret.
Brandon Sanderson
Mistborn:
Secret History
Mistborn - 3.5
ePub r1.2
Titivillus 30.10.2021
Brandon Sanderson, 2016
Illustrations: Isaac Stewart, Ben McSweeney
Cover art: Miranda Meeks
Digital editor: Titivillus
ePub base r2.1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
Mistborn: Secret History
Part One: Empire
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part Two: Well
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Three: Spirit
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part Four: Journey
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Five: Ire
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part Six: Hero
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Postscript
About the Author
FOR NATHAN HATFIELD
Who helped Mistborn come to be
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SO, I DROPPED THIS one on my team like a strike from a stealth bomber. They were already busy with the art and proofreading for the books we’re doing this spring, and then I popped up with another surprise novella and asked if it could possibly be ready in time to be released alongside The Bands of Mourning.
Even though they’re used to me doing things like this by now, their turnaround on Mistborn: Secret History was incredible. More than for almost any other story, they deserve praise for their excellent work on this one.
The incredulous Peter Ahlstrom in particular acted both in his normal roles, as well as being the primary editor, copyeditor, and proofreader for the book. He only rolled his eyes at me once in a while as I talked about this latest crazy story I wanted to publish, and he gave some particularly excellent advice on how to improve the story. If you see him around, make sure to thank him. As I type this, he’s spending his entire Saturday pushing to get this book ready for publication next week.
Karen Ahlstrom did an excellent continuity edit for us, as well as building a timeline. She caught a lot of the big errors I’d made, which would have had many of you scratching your heads.
Isaać Stewart was art director for this book—he did the cover design, and as always is the creator of the awesome Allomantic symbols you see spread throughout the book. Miranda Meeks did our wonderful cover; I’m happy to finally get Kelsier on the cover of a Mistborn story.
Writing group for this book was Emily Sanderson, Karen & Peter Ahlstrom, Darci & Eric James Stone, Alan Layton, Ben “Seriously, Brandon?” Olsen, Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson, Kaylynn ZoBell, Isaac & Ethan Skarstedt, and Isaać Stewart.
Our alpha, beta, and gamma readers were Nikki Ramsay, Mark Lindberg, Lyndsey Luther, Alice Arneson, Kristina Kugler, Megan Kanne, Karen Ahlstrom, Josh Walker, Mi’chelle Walker, Ian McNatt, David Behrens, Matt Wiens, Eric Lake, Bob Kluttz, Kelly Neumann, Jakob Remick, and Gary Singer.
Without these people catching all my silly mistakes, this book would have been a travesty of continuity. Many thanks to you all.
Finally, thanks to Joel, Dallin, Oliver, and Emily. For putting up with me all these years.
BRANDON SANDERSON
PREFACE
THIS STORY CONTAINS ENORMOUS spoilers for the first three Mistborn novels. Seriously, please don’t read this unless you’ve read those books. I’d actually prefer you wait until you’ve finished book six, The Bands of Mourning, because some of the reveals in this story will spoil that book as well.
What follows is something I started planning in 2004, over a decade ago at this point. For years I wasn’t certain if I’d be able to write it; it depended on how popular Mistborn was, and on whether people cared about the greater cosmere or not.
Well, responses to both have been incredible. So, off and on over the years I worked on scenes for this when I had a spare moment. Though I love how it turned out, I want to warn you. Structurally, this isn’t like most pieces I’ve written. It relies on knowledge of the original Mistborn Trilogy, and though it tells its own cohesive narrative, the elements of that narrative are scattered across three years’ time in-world.
That creates something unlike anything I’ve done before. Something weird, but audacious in its own right.
Now, it’s finally time to reveal some secrets.
PART ONE
EMPIRE
1
KELSIER BURNED THE ELEVENTH METAL.
Nothing changed. He still stood in that Luthadel square, facing down the Lord Ruler. A hushed audience, both skaa and noble, watched at the perimeter. A squeaking wheel turned lazily in the wind, hanging from the side of the overturned prison wagon nearby. An Inquisitor’s head had been nailed to the wood of the wagon’s bottom, held in place by its own spikes.
Nothing changed, while everything changed. For to Kelsier’s eyes, two men now stood before him.
One was the immortal emperor who had dominated for a thousand years: an imposing figure with jet-black hair and a chest stuck through with two spears that he didn’t even seem to notice. Next to him stood a man with the same features—but a completely different demeanor. A figure cloaked in thick furs, nose and cheeks flush as if cold. His hair was tangled and windswept, his attitude jovial, smiling.
It was the same man.
Can I use this? Kelsier thought, frantic.
Black ash fell lightly between them. The Lord Ruler glanced toward the Inquisitor that Kelsier had killed. “Those are very hard to replace,” he said, his voice imperious.
That tone seemed a direct contrast to the man beside him: a vagabond, a mountain man wearing the Lord Ruler’s face. This is what you really are, Kelsier thought. But that didn’t help. It was only further proof that the Eleventh Metal wasn’t what Kelsier had once hoped. The metal was no magical solution for ending the Lord Ruler. He would have to rely instead upon his other plan.
And so, Kelsier smiled.
“I killed you once,” the Lord Ruler said.
“You tried,” Kelsier replied, his heart racing. The other plan, the secret plan. “But you can’t kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that thing you’ve never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.”
The Lord Ruler snorted. He raised a casual arm.
Kelsier braced himself. He could not fight against someone who was immortal.
Not alive, at least.
Stand tall. Give them something to remember.
The Lord Ruler backhanded him. Agony hit Kelsier like a stroke of lightning. In that moment, Kelsier flared the Eleventh Metal, and caught a glimpse of something new.
The Lord Ruler standing in a room—no, a cavern! The Lord Ruler stepped into a glowing pool and the world shifted around him, rocks crumbling, the room twisting, everything changing.
The vision vanished.
Kelsier died.
It turned out to be far more painful a process than he had anticipated. Instead of a soft fade to nothingness, he felt an awful tearing sensation—as if he were a cloth caught between the jaws of two vicious hounds.
He screamed, desperately trying to hold himself together. His will meant nothing. He was rent, ripped, and hurled into a place of endless shifting mists.
He stumbled to his knees, gasping, aching. He wasn’t certain what he knelt upon, as downward seemed to just be more mist. The ground rippled like liquid, and felt soft to his touch.
He knelt there, enduring, feeling the pain slowly fade away. At last he unclenched his jaw and groaned.
He was alive. Kind of.
He managed to look up. That same thick greyness shifted all around him. A nothingness? No, he could see shapes in it, shadows. Hills? And high in the sky, some kind of light. A tiny sun perhaps, as seen through dense grey clouds.
Kelsier breathed in and out, then growled, heaving himself to his feet. “Well,” he proclaimed, “that was thoroughly awful.”
It did seem there was an afterlife, which was a pleasant discovery. Did this mean… did this mean Mare was still out there somewhere? He’d always offered platitudes, talking to the others about being with her again someday. But deep down he’d never believed, never really thought…
The end was not the end. Kelsier smiled again, this time truly excited. He turned about, and as he inspected his surroundings, the mists seemed to withdraw. No, it felt like Kelsier was solidifying, entering this place fully. The withdrawal of the mists was more like a clearing of his own mind.
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.
She stretched, then faded away. Other spirits in the square followed.
Kelsier spun on God. “What’s happening?”
“You didn’t think this was the end, did you?” God asked, waving toward the shadowy world. “This is the in-between step. After death and before…”
“Before what?”
“Before the Beyond,” God said. “The Somewhere Else. Where souls must go. Where yours must go.”