Mistborn: The Final Empire

In this chapter’s epigraph, the Hero of Ages writes that the Deepness, the mysterious threat to Scadrial that the Hero of Ages must defeat, is sinister enough to unite the many nations of Scadrial behind the single purpose of defeating it.

Vin arrives at a soup kitchen in a skaa slum in Luthadel to learn Soothing from Breeze at a recruitment meeting for the skaa rebels. Because Vin distrusts emotional Allomancy, Breeze explains to Vin that using emotional Allomancy on another person is about manipulation and perceiving the other’s initial emotional state. Ham joins them and poses a philosophical question concerning the Lord Ruler’s reign: Are they truly doing the right thing by overthrowing the Lord Ruler’s empire, if the Lord Ruler as God determines what is right and wrong? Vin is uninterested in answering. Breeze reminds Ham that the Lord Ruler is merely a “sliver” of God as he is not omnipresent nor omnipotent, therefore Ham’s question is pointless.

The meeting begins with Vin and Breeze watching from another room. As Kelsier begins speaking to the skaa about joining their rebel military, Breeze carefully manipulates their emotions to make them more receptive and excited about Kelsier’s plan. Kelsier displays his scars from the Pits of Hathsin as his reputation as the Survivor has grown powerful among the skaa.

After the meeting, Kelsier stands on the roof of Clubs’s shop looking at Kredik Shaw, the Lord Ruler’s palace. The name is Terris meaning The Hill of a Thousand Spires, reflected in the building’s many towers and needle-like protrusions of metal. Sazed joins Kelsier to speak of the history of the Keepers as a persecuted race. Kelsier asks Sazed to teach him of a forgotten religion, but he cannot connect with it enough to convert.

Kelsier holds a crew meeting. Marsh is present for the first time. Recruitment among the skaa has fallen short of their expectations. They discuss how Marsh should infiltrate the Ministry, with Vin reminding Kelsier of Camon’s transport con. They plan to hide Marsh among the acolytes moving to Luthadel to begin their training. The meeting is interrupted when one of Ham’s guards reports that Camon’s lair has been found by the Inquisitors.

In this chapter’s epigraph, Rashek represents a growing sect of Terrismen that is resistant to the Hero of Ages’s rule. He describes them as violent and prepared to challenge the new empire if the opportunity arises.

At Camon’s lair, Kelsier and his crew find a scene of disturbing violence. Camon’s crew has been massacred by Inquisitors. They conclude that the Inquisitor must be following Vin and found Camon’s lair, though it is unclear how this could be possible. Kelsier decides to look for Camon on the streets, knowing that the crew made Camon into a beggar after Kelsier’s confrontation with him. Kelsier searches through the slums, noting the lack of beggars around the city’s statues of the Deepness. He discovers Camon’s body in an alleyway. Vin reveals herself, having followed Kelsier from the lair, and the two consider what methods the Inquisitors could be using to track Vin.

Vin has begun training seriously as a noblewoman and wearing formal gowns in Mansion Renoux to practice. She is attracted to the lifestyle of the nobility but is more interested in becoming a part of Kelsier’s crew: “It was the shadowed prospect—unlikely and unreasonable, but still seductive—of a group whose members actually trusted one another” (214). Vin attends her first ball at Keep Venture, the most powerful Great House in Luthadel, accompanied by Sazed. She pretends to be Valette Renoux, niece to Lord Renoux.

Vin spends most of the ball at a solitary table. The stained-glass windows of the ballroom depict religious scenes and the Lord Ruler’s victory over the Deepness, depicted as a formless mass. Vin questions what the Deepness was and how the Lord Ruler was able to defeat it. When Sazed leaves to attend the servant’s dinner, Vin leaves her table and wanders around the ballroom. Several obligators attend the ball, including the man that Vin recognizes as her father. She finds a secluded balcony and stays there until she is joined by Elend Venture, heir to the Venture house.

Instead of attending to her, Elend begins reading. Vin is both frustrated and interested in Elend, questioning why he doesn’t ask her to dance. Elend does not like to dance and expresses his disapproval of the Venture house without revealing his title; he disagrees with his family’s harsh treatment of their skaa servants. After the ball, Sazed informs Vin that Elend is the heir to House Venture.

At Renoux’s mansion, Vin and Sazed wait for Kelsier to debrief him on the events of the ball. Sazed is displeased that Vin spoke with Elend Venture as it will threaten to bring too much attention to her from the other nobility. Vin, however, is resolved to see Elend again and continue talking to him, reflecting that she had not felt like Valette or Vin in his presence: “No, she’d simply been [...] whoever she was” (232). When Kelsier arrives, he agrees with Sazed and instructs Vin to stay away from Elend.

Kelsier leaves for his nightly raid on the nobility. Vin secretly follows him along an Allomantic road inlaid with metal ingots for Allomancers to Push and Pull on. She loses him at the city wall, then finds him on a rooftop near Keep Venture. Kelsier confronts her lack of trust in him but eventually reveals that he plans to sneak into the Lord Ruler’s palace. Vin says she wants to help him and be more useful to the crew, which convinces Kelsier to take her along.

Kelsier gives her a bead of atium. Once ingested and burned by an Allomancer, that Allomancer can perceive what their opponent intends to do a few seconds in the future. Unless the opponent begins burning atium themselves, in which case the possibilities become too overwhelming to parse. Supplied with atium, Kelsier and Vin go to Kredik Shaw.

In this chapter’s epigraph, the Hero of Ages continues traveling into the mountains, and he begins to question his mental stability and whether he might be losing hold on his sanity. He senses a presence following him. Rashek’s hatred of him continues to weigh on the Hero of Ages.

At Kredik Shaw, Vin notices the strong emotional Allomancy the Lord Ruler exudes, making her depressed. Kelsier plans to find an inner chamber of the palace, the scene of his wife’s betrayal three years previously. He has not given up on discovering what is in the chamber.

They enter the palace and kill the hazekiller guards they encounter, Vin killing men for the first time in her life. She pauses, noting that the four men she killed were skaa, but Kelsier reassures her they deserve death for selling out to the Lord Ruler. They find the inner chamber, which houses a stone room in the center. A Steel Inquisitor waits for them inside the room; two others enter the chamber. Vin and Kelsier fight to make their escape. While Vin attempts to flee, the Inquisitors follow her, intent on learning who her parents are. She tries to use atium, but the Inquisitors have their own supply. She is stabbed in the side by an Inquisitor but manages to get out of the palace. Severely wounded, Vin is surrounded by Inquisitors when Sazed appears and rescues her. 

In this chapter’s epigraph, the Hero of Ages was chosen to defeat the Deepness by a group of Terris philosophers. One of them, Kwaan, has since turned against the Hero of Ages and opposes his rule.

Kelsier has escaped Kredik Shaw and the Inquisitors; the defenders focused their attack on Vin, allowing Kelsier to return safely to Clubs’s shop. There, he and the rest of the crew discuss how to save Vin when Sazed arrives carrying Vin’s unconscious body. He treats Vin’s stab wound and then shows the group a book taken from within Kredik Shaw. It is the Hero of Ages’s logbook, written in Khlenni, and will require Sazed to translate it.