Kelsier and Vin, both in mistcloaks of long grey strips, on a misty rooftop above a dark city at night, the palace spires behind them. — On her first night of training Kelsier gives Vin a mistcloak and takes her out into the mists over Luthadel.

The Mistborn Saga · Era One · Book I · 2006

The Final Empire

A half-skaa street thief, a smiling revolutionary, and a heist against a god who has ruled for a thousand years.

Mistborn: The Final Empire (Tor, 17 July 2006) opens the Mistborn Saga in a world where the bad guy has already won. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler has reigned as god-emperor: the sun is red, ash falls from the sky, the plants grow brown, mists cover the land every night, and the skaa labour as slaves under the nobility and the priests of the Steel Ministry. Sanderson started from a single question: “What if the Dark Lord won?”

It is a heist that turns into a revolution. Kelsier, the scarred and relentlessly cheerful Survivor of Hathsin, gathers a crew of thieves to bring the empire down, and finds Vin, a wary sixteen-year-old half-skaa street thief who turns out to be Mistborn. Most of the book belongs to the two of them, with some chapters seen through the eyes of Elend Venture, a bookish young lord; Sanderson counts the fragments of an old logbook that head nearly every chapter as a third viewpoint of their own.

The first book of Era One, followed by The Well of Ascension (2007) and The Hero of Ages (2008), it introduces Allomancy, the art of swallowing metals and “burning” them for power, and most of the cast the first trilogy follows. Twenty years on, it is also the book Apple’s first Mistborn film is adapting.

Part 1

The Survivor of Hathsin

“Ash fell from the sky.”

So the book begins, on Lord Tresting’s plantation, where skaa in brown smocks work brown crops under a ruddy midday sky while their lord, beneath a parasol, entertains an obligator of the Steel Ministry. This is the Final Empire a thousand years into the Lord Ruler’s reign: a red sun, ashfalls as routine as weather, a mist that comes every night, and skaa treated like cattle. Every skaa head is bowed except one: a straight-backed man looks up, meets Tresting’s eyes, smiles, and is gone. That evening the stranger, his arms heavily scarred, walks into a skaa hovel, old Mennis among those inside, and tells them, “The mist is not what you think. You fear it far too much.” When Tresting’s men take a skaa girl up to the manor, the stranger kills Tresting and every obligator, taskmaster and soldier with him, and burns the house.

In Luthadel, the imperial capital, Vin is a sixteen-year-old half-skaa thief in Camon’s crew, small, wary, and still ruled by the lessons of Reen, the half-brother who raised her: anyone will betray you. Camon is posing as “Lord Jedue” to swindle the Steel Ministry, and Vin’s job is to use her Luck, a knack for nudging moods that she does not know is Allomancy, to keep the obligators from turning him away. In the waiting room sit Kelsier and his old partner Dockson, and when a Steel Inquisitor follows Camon’s party out, Kelsier sets out to deal with it.

Frightened, Vin tries to slip away with her few belongings, among them the earring her mother gave her; Ulef betrays her, and Camon beats her. Then the smiling stranger walks into the den. Kelsier deposes Camon, takes the three thousand boxings the Ministry has just paid him, and tests Vin with a vial of metals. She is Mistborn, able to burn every Allomantic metal where an ordinary Misting burns one. So is Kelsier, the only known survivor of the Lord Ruler’s atium mine, the Pits of Hathsin.

That night his crew gathers: Breeze the Soother, Ham the Thug, the surly Smoker Clubs, Dockson, and Yeden of the skaa rebellion. The job is outrageous: raise a skaa army, set the Great Houses against each other, steal the Lord Ruler’s atium and bring down the Final Empire. Clubs walks out, and comes back. Kelsier shows them the Eleventh Metal, rumoured to be the Lord Ruler’s weakness, then spends the night stealing atium from Keep Venture.

Vin wakes in Clubs’s carpentry shop, the crew’s base, and notices how different a crew is when its members trust each other. She meets Clubs’s nephew Lestibournes and eavesdrops on Kelsier’s brother Marsh. Kelsier catches her and takes her out for her first night of training: a mistcloak, the eight basic metals, and the city wall. Beyond it a mistwraith follows them, and on the road the Terris steward Sazed waits with a carriage. Kelsier offers Vin the three thousand boxings and leave to go; she takes the money and stays, to see how things turn out. At his mansion in Fellise, an hour outside Luthadel, Lord Renoux proposes that she become his young relative, Lady Valette Renoux.

At midday under falling ash, skaa workers bend over brown crops while one straight-backed man among them looks up and smiles at a startled nobleman standing under a parasol beside a grey-robed priest. — **I · 1 The Man Who Looks Up** At midday on Lord Tresting’s plantation the skaa work with heads bowed in the ashfall while their lord, under a parasol, courts a Ministry obligator. Then one straight-backed skaa looks up, meets Tresting’s eyes, and smiles, and a moment later is nowhere to be seen. That night he tells a hovel full of skaa they fear the mist far too much. By morning Tresting is dead and his manor a smoldering scar.

In a bare stone office a lean, tattooed, shaven-headed priest behind a desk studies a pudgy man in a green vest who pleads with him, while a thin teenage girl stands by the door, staring at the priest in concentration. — **I · 2 Vin’s Luck** Camon, Vin’s crewleader, is playing a desperate nobleman, “Lord Jedue,” to swindle the Steel Ministry. Called back to the Canton of Finance, he finds a High Prelan across the desk who wants more convincing. Vin, sixteen and silent by the door, reaches for what she calls her Luck, not knowing it is Allomancy, and Soothes his suspicion away. He grants Camon three thousand boxings. She is sure something is wrong.

Under falling ash, two men in gentlemen’s coats stand at the mouth of an alley watching a tall bald man in dark robes, discs of steel in his eye sockets, come down the steps of a stone building across the street. — **I · 3 The First Inquisitor** Kelsier and his old partner Dockson sit in the Canton’s waiting room eating the Ministry’s cakes while Camon’s scam goes on, then watch from across the street. A High Prelan comes out after Camon’s party, and behind him a Steel Inquisitor: a thick metal spike through each eye, the flat heads shining in the sockets, the points out the back of the skull. Dockson will deal with the Ministry’s tails; Kelsier, smiling, takes the Inquisitor.

In a cramped, smoky den a tall blond man in a gentleman’s coat stands smiling in the doorway, a stout man sprawls on the floor, and a bruised teenage girl crouches beside a table looking up at the newcomer. — **I · 4 The Survivor at the Door** Frightened by the Ministry, Vin tries to slip away with her few belongings, among them the earring her mother gave her, and Ulef betrays her to Camon. The beating stops when a tall, smiling stranger walks in. Kelsier deposes Camon, makes Milev crewleader, takes the three thousand boxings as his fee and rents the den for the night. Then he tests Vin with a vial of metals. She is Mistborn.

In a lamplit back room a grinning blond man holds up a small whitish metal bar while a portly gentleman with a cane, a muscular man in a sleeveless vest and a bearded man at the table watch, and a teenage girl sits apart in a corner. — **I · 5 The Eleventh Metal** That night the den fills with Kelsier’s old crew: Breeze the Soother, Ham the Thug, the grizzled Smoker Clubs, Dockson, and Yeden of the skaa rebellion. Kelsier pitches the job: topple the Final Empire and steal the Lord Ruler’s atium. Clubs walks out (he will be back). Then Kelsier reveals that Vin is Mistborn and holds up a small whitish bar, the Eleventh Metal, rumoured to be the Lord Ruler’s weakness.

On a misty road at night a very tall bald man in striped robes waits beside a black carriage with a lantern as a man and a young woman in mistcloaks walk out of the fog, the young woman glancing back. — **I · 6 The Terrisman on the Road** Over the city wall and into the dark country, something follows them through the mist; Kelsier shows Vin it is a mistwraith. On the main road a carriage waits, and beside it the tall Terris steward Sazed, who drives them to Fellise. On the way Kelsier offers Vin the three thousand boxings and leave to go if she does not trust him. She takes the money and stays, to see how things turn out.

In a rich lamplit study a thin grey-mustached nobleman in spectacles appraises a wary teenage girl in drab clothes standing on a fine carpet, while a blond man in a mistcloak leans on a bookcase behind her, amused. — **I · 7 Lord Renoux** Lord Renoux’s mansion stands in Fellise, an hour outside Luthadel, and its thin, dignified, grey-mustached master proposes that Vin become his young relative, Lady Valette Renoux, newly introduced to the noble houses. Renoux is not what he seems. The real lord is dead, and the man in his place is OreSeur, a kandra under contract to Kelsier.

Part 2

Rebels Beneath a Sky of Ash

It is late autumn. Vin spars with Kelsier at Allomantic cat-and-mouse, has her hair trimmed and is told not to crop it boyishly short again, and drills her noble cover, while Sazed offers her religion after religion: Trelagism is the fifth, and he knows 562 more. In Luthadel she studies the other metals with the crew’s specialists and watches Kelsier speak to a secret meeting of skaa while Breeze’s Soothers and Rioters work on the crowd. Then the Ministry finds Camon’s old lair. Ulef and Milev are dead there, and Kelsier, searching among the city’s beggars, finds Camon hung from a hook through his mouth, a ritual killing the Ministry reserves for people who misuse Allomancy.

Vin’s first ball is at Keep Venture, seat of the first of the ten Great Houses, a gothic pile lit from outside so that its stained glass blazes into the hall. The nobles see Valette, not Vin. At dinner she glimpses her father across the room, and hiding on the balcony above the dancers she has her first conversation with Elend Venture, the house’s bookish, rumpled heir. Sazed is shocked when he hears.

Vin trails Kelsier along a road set with metal spikes that lets an Allomancer outpace a horse, and he teaches her atium, which shows its burner a few seconds of the future, then takes her into Kredik Shaw, the Lord Ruler’s palace of spires. They fight toward the small stone building the Lord Ruler visits for three hours every three days, and Vin kills for the first time. The Inquisitor Kelsier saw at the Canton waits inside, and two more arrive. Vin snatches up a leather-bound book as a shield, burns atium and breaks free, and the Inquisitor buries an obsidian axe in her side. She flees across the rooftops with the book, and as she blacks out someone gathers her into a protective embrace. It is not Kelsier.

While the crew is rounding on Kelsier for taking her, Sazed walks in with Vin in his arms, having burned through an entire metalmind to make the trip. They feed her pewter to speed her healing, and he stitches her up. The book is written in Khlenni, the language of Khlennium, and Sazed thinks he can translate it.

In a packed, lamplit room of skaa a blond man with scarred arms speaks passionately from a crate, while a portly gentleman, a muscular man and a teenage girl watch from the back wall. — **I · 8 Soothers in the Crowd** Back in Luthadel, Vin learns the other metals from the crew’s specialists, beginning with Breeze, while Ham debates whether overthrowing an empire can be moral. Then she watches Kelsier speak to a secret meeting of skaa, and sees the machinery under the oratory: Breeze and his Soothers and Rioters, scattered through the crowd, working on its emotions so that the speech lands.

A young woman in a pale grey-blue ball gown stands at the top of a few steps at the edge of an immense cathedral-like hall, its tall stained-glass windows blazing with light, couples dancing far below. — **I · 9 Valette at Keep Venture** Vin’s first ball is at Keep Venture, seat of the first of the Great Houses. On the way Kelsier drops into her carriage to give her advice, then leaps back out into the mists. Inside, the attention terrifies her until she realizes that the nobles are looking at Lady Valette Renoux, not at her. At dinner she glimpses her father across the room; Reen once pointed him out to her.

On a quiet balcony lit by small blue lanterns, a rumpled young nobleman sprawled in a chair with a book looks up in surprise at a guarded young woman in a ball gown. — **I · 10 The Balcony** Hiding from the dancers, Vin climbs to the balcony above the hall and finds someone already hiding there: a young nobleman with unbrushed hair and an unbuttoned suit, reading a book at a ball. He is Elend Venture, heir to the house throwing it. Their first conversation is a wary one, and when Sazed hears whom she has been talking to, he is shocked.

Two figures in mistcloaks crouch on a misty rooftop at night, the man pointing toward an immense black palace of needle-like spires across the fog. — **I · 11 The Hill of a Thousand Spires** Vin trails Kelsier from Fellise along a road studded with metal spikes that let an Allomancer bound faster than a horse, and finds him watching Keep Venture. Caught, he teaches her atium, a bead so bright it seems liquid, which lets its burner see a few seconds into the future. Then he leads her toward Kredik Shaw, the Lord Ruler’s palace of spires and sheer towers.

In a vast dim domed hall a young woman in a mistcloak holds up a thick leather-bound book as small metal triangles glance off it, facing a robed Inquisitor in the doorway of a small carved stone building. — **I · 12 The Building Within a Building** Inside the palace they fight toward the small stone building the Lord Ruler visits for three hours every three days, and Vin kills for the first time. An Inquisitor waits inside, and two more come in through side doors. When one Pushes sharpened metal triangles at her, Vin snatches up the nearest thing to hand, a leather-bound book, and holds it up as a shield. She will keep it.

On a rain-swept rooftop at night a soaked young woman in a torn mistcloak half-kneels with one hand pressed to her side and a book clutched to her chest, looking back at a tall robed silhouette in the mist. — **I · 13 Rain on the Rooftops** Vin burns atium and breaks free, but the Inquisitor Kelsier saw outside the Canton buries an obsidian axe in her side. She flees across the rooftops in the rain with the book still in her hands, fools him with it for a moment, and is found again. As she blacks out, someone gathers her into a protective embrace. It is not Kelsier.

A very tall bald man in striped robes, soaked with rain, stands in a lamplit doorway carrying an unconscious young woman in a torn mistcloak, as a blond man turns in shock and a bearded man rises from his chair. — **I · 14 Not Kelsier** The crew is rounding on Kelsier for taking Vin into the palace when Sazed walks in carrying her. The quiet steward has burned through an entire metalmind to make the trip from Renoux’s mansion. They feed her pewter to speed her healing, and Sazed stitches her up. The book she saved is written in Khlenni, the language of Khlennium, and he thinks he can translate it.

Part 3

Children of a Bleeding Sun

Vin sleeps for two weeks, in which time Kelsier renames Lestibournes “Spook.” At Fellise she finds Sazed translating in spectacles: he is storing his eyesight in a tinmind, to draw on later. He is a Keeper, and he tells her calmly that every Terris steward is a eunuch. Kelsier tells her about Mare, his dead wife, and lets her go back to the balls.

At Keep Elariel, Elend drops a stack of books on her table; Lady Shan Elariel, his former fiancée and a Soother, summons “Valette”; and Vin skims one of Elend’s books and finds it close to treason. Leaving the party, she watches a soldier casually cut the throat of a skaa kitchen boy who begged a nobleman for a coin.

Kelsier is building the house war, leaving a murdered nobleman in House Tekiel’s garden and, disguised as a lame skaa beggar, selling rumours to Lord Straff Venture himself. Marsh teaches Vin to Seek with bronze. Kelsier visits the caves where Ham is drilling the rebel army, mastering his memories of the Pits to go underground, and secretly uses Allomancy so that a smaller recruit, Demoux, wins a duel against a boastful one, Bilg.

The book Vin saved is a third story running beneath the other two. Nearly every chapter has opened with a passage from it: the logbook of a man the Terris philosophers proclaimed the Hero of Ages, travelling north toward a pulsing Well to defeat something called the Deepness, while a young Terris packman, Rashek, watches him with hatred. The reader is invited to take it for the young Lord Ruler’s own diary.

“Sometimes, I worry that I’m not the hero everyone thinks I am.”

Spook, fifteen, gives Vin a handkerchief, the sign of a serious courtship, and Sazed explains Feruchemy and the Keepers, formed to remember what the Lord Ruler erased. Dockson tells her how, when he was a plantation skaa, a lord took the woman he loved for a night and had her killed in the morning, and Vin wonders about Elend. At the next ball she asks Elend outright whether he has ever slept with a skaa woman. Once, he says: his father made him, at thirteen, and never again. He wants to know how skaa really live, and he gives her his handkerchief too.

Then the skaa army attacks the Holstep Garrison. Kelsier runs for the caves on flared pewter to warn the rest, and Vin follows and learns what “pewter dragging” costs. On the way they find what is left of the army surrounded by the Valtroux Garrison and leave it to its fate; about three quarters of the recruits have died, trusting in Kelsier’s supposed powers. Some two thousand remain at the caves, ready to move thanks to old Mennis from the plantation.

A very tall bald man in striped robes and small round spectacles sits at a broad desk by grey window light, bent over an old leather-bound book beside a sheaf of notes. — **I · 15 Spectacles** Vin wakes after two weeks (Kelsier has meanwhile renamed Clubs’s nephew Lestibournes “Spook”) and back at Fellise finds Sazed working on the translation in spectacles. He is storing his own eyesight in a tinmind, to draw on later, and his sight is weaker while he does. He tells her what the Keepers are, and that every Terris steward is a eunuch.

In a ballroom lit from above by stained-glass ceiling windows, a rumpled young nobleman drops a stack of books on a small table and sits down beside a startled young woman in a green gown. — **I · 16 A Stack of Books** At Keep Elariel, Elend sits down at Vin’s table uninvited and drops a stack of books on it. Then Lady Shan Elariel, his former fiancée, summons “Valette,” and Vin realizes Shan is a Soother, while Shan’s Terrisman leafs through Elend’s abandoned books. Vin skims one herself: it is close to treason. Leaving the party, she watches a soldier casually kill a skaa kitchen boy who begged for a coin.

In a mansion forecourt with crates of weapons behind them, a gaunt, stern man with pale eyes raises a hand as if listening, while a young woman faces him with her eyes half-closed in concentration. — **I · 17 Ironeyes** Weapons are being crated outside Mansion Renoux for the rebel army when Kelsier’s older brother Marsh arrives: a Seeker, stern and cold-eyed, once nicknamed Ironeyes. He teaches Vin to burn bronze and hear the rhythmic pulse of other Allomancers burning their metals, and gives her some deeper Allomantic theory besides. He is the crew’s way into the Steel Ministry.

In a torchlit cavern a slight young recruit squares off against a huge swaggering one inside a ring of watching skaa, while a blond man with scarred arms and a muscular man watch from the edge. — **I · 18 The Caves** Kelsier travels out by canal boat, reading Sazed’s translation of the logbook, and has to master his memories of the Pits before he can go underground into the caves where Ham is drilling the skaa army. At dinner he Riots a boastful recruit, Bilg, into a duel with the smaller Demoux, and secretly uses Allomancy so that Demoux wins. Legends need a little help.

In a plain sitting room a young woman in a window seat looks up warily from a book at a gangly teenage boy who holds out a folded white handkerchief while staring at the floor. — **I · 19 Spook’s Handkerchief** Spook, fifteen and gangly, comes out to Fellise with Dockson to fetch more weapons and gives Vin a handkerchief, the sign that he would like to court her seriously. While she waits to see Dockson, Sazed explains Feruchemy and the Keepers. Then Dockson tells her how a lord took the woman he loved for a night and had her killed in the morning, and Vin wonders about Elend.

Beside a stone pillar at the edge of a ballroom, an earnest young nobleman holds out a folded white handkerchief to a young woman in a dark violet gown who studies his face. — **I · 20 The Honest Question** Ordered by Shan to search Elend’s books, Vin instead asks him outright whether he has ever slept with a skaa woman. Once, he says: his father made him, when he was thirteen, and never again. He is fascinated by how skaa really live, and before leaving with his friends he gives her his handkerchief. Then she climbs to a tower window to spy on his circle, and Kelsier turns up at the same window.

Under falling ash, a dusty blond man and a young woman stop on a low rise beside a canal, looking down at a ragged band of men surrounded by the ordered ranks of an army. — **I · 21 The Run** The skaa army has attacked the Holstep Garrison. Kelsier runs for the caves on flared pewter, following the canal, hoping to get there before the Valtroux Garrison does; Vin comes too and learns the price of pewter dragging. On the way they find what is left of the army, surrounded, and leave it to its fate. At the caves some two thousand soldiers remain.

Part 4

Dancers in a Sea of Mist

The crew judges the job a failure. From a rented rooftop over the fountain square they watch skaa executed, their blood emptied into the fountain, and Vin recognizes her father below; Kelsier names him: Tevidian, Lord Prelan of the Steel Ministry. Kelsier talks them into going on. Marsh, now inside the Ministry, reports its Soothing stations and that Inquisitors can die of old age, and Vin burns gold for the first time. At Keep Lekal, a pyramid Sanderson modelled on the Luxor in Las Vegas, Elend urges “Valette” to leave the city, and in his own chapters his friend Jastes tells him her carriage left the city empty: she must be a spy.

At the last Venture ball before the war, Valette is frozen out and Elend breaks things off. The gossip Kliss sells Vin a secret: Elend is to be the war’s first casualty. Vin smashes a stained-glass window to get out of the keep, reaches Elend’s room and fights his six assassins, two of them Mistborn, one of whom is Shan Elariel, and kills Shan. Bandaged, her gown in tatters, she bursts into Clubs’s kitchen, and when Kelsier says she should not have saved Elend, she shouts him down.

The house war is under way: Elariel attacks Hasting while Vin and Spook watch from a rooftop. At Marsh’s meeting place Kelsier and Vin find a flayed body and take it for Marsh. Kelsier sends the crew to a backup lair and goes alone to the Pits of Hathsin, where he destroys the crystal formations that grow the atium geodes.

At the next execution Spook and Lord Renoux are among the prisoners in the cages. Kelsier leaps down and fights the Inquisitor who wounded Vin with flying metal, even spinning bars in midair to turn arrows, while Ham brings skaa soldiers, Dockson holds Vin back, and Elend shoves into the fight looking for Valette. When the Inquisitor buries an axe in Renoux’s back and turns on Elend, Kelsier, remembering that Vin loves him, attacks; he pins the Inquisitor’s skull to an overturned cart and cuts off its head with its own axe.

Then the Lord Ruler arrives by carriage, and Kelsier does not run. One of Ham’s Thugs drives a spear clean through the Lord Ruler’s chest, and a second spear follows. The god-emperor walks up to Kelsier with both still in him, exchanges a few words, and kills him with a single backhand blow, then drives one of the spears into Kelsier’s chest and orders his soldiers and Inquisitors to begin killing skaa. Vin leaps down to the body; Ham drags her away.

From a high rooftop under falling ash, a young woman kneels at the parapet staring down at a vast square with a fountain and a crowd held back by soldiers, a blond man standing grim beside her. — **I · 22 The Fountain Square** The job looks like a failure, and then Spook brings word of executions in the fountain square. From a rented rooftop the crew watches skaa killed one after another, their blood emptied into the fountain, and Vin recognizes her father below: Tevidian, Lord Prelan of the Steel Ministry. Kelsier persuades the crew not to quit.

A young woman in a ball gown flies outward through a great round stained-glass window into the night mist, shards of coloured glass spinning around her. — **I · 23 The Rose Window** At the last ball before the house war the nobility freezes Valette out, and Elend breaks things off. The gossip Kliss sells Vin a secret: Elend is to be the war’s first casualty. Vin smashes through a stained-glass window, reaches Elend’s room and fights six Elariel assassins, two Thugs, two Coinshots and two Mistborn, one of them Shan Elariel. She outwits Shan in an atium duel and kills her.

At the bottom of a narrow rock gorge a lone blond man with scarred forearms stands amid bursting clusters of glittering crystal, his face hard. — **I · 24 The Pits of Hathsin** At Marsh’s meeting place Kelsier and Vin find a flayed body in a blood-spattered room and take it for Marsh. Kelsier sends Renoux out of Fellise and the crew to a backup lair, then goes alone to the Pits of Hathsin, where he got his scars, and destroys the crystal formations that grow the atium geodes. No more atium will grow there.

In a square under falling ash a blond man stands braced as two iron bars spin in the air before him, knocking arrows aside, facing a robed Inquisitor with two obsidian axes, a rumpled young nobleman stumbling back behind him. — **I · 25 Living Metal** At another execution Spook and Lord Renoux are among the prisoners in the cages. Kelsier leaps down, tears the door off a prisoner cart and meets the Inquisitor who wounded Vin, fighting with flying metal, even spinning bars in midair to turn the arrows. When the Inquisitor axes Renoux and turns on Elend, who has come looking for Valette, Kelsier remembers that Vin loves him and attacks.

In a square under falling ash a tall pale man in a black-and-white suit with two spear shafts jutting from his chest walks calmly toward a blond man who stands his ground, smiling. — **I · 26 I Am Hope** Kelsier kills the Inquisitor with its own axe, and the Lord Ruler arrives by carriage. Kelsier does not run. Five rebels charge; one of Ham’s Thugs drives a spear through the god-emperor’s chest, and a second spear follows. The Lord Ruler walks up to Kelsier with both still in him, and Kelsier answers him: “I am hope.” One backhand blow kills him.

Under falling ash a muscular man hauls a grief-stricken young woman backward across a square as she reaches toward its centre, dark robed riders on black horses charging in behind. — **I · 27 Pulled Away** The Lord Ruler drives one of the spears from his own chest into Kelsier’s body, orders his soldiers and Inquisitors to start killing skaa, and returns to his carriage as more Inquisitors ride in on black horses. Vin leaps down to Kelsier; Ham hauls her away. The crew’s leader is dead, and none of them yet understands that this, too, was part of the plan.

Part 5

Believers in a Forgotten World

That night Vin and Sazed watch a skaa man call his neighbours out into the mists, swearing that Kelsier appeared to him hours after his death, and the crew understands at last what Kelsier planned all along: to become a martyr. In his informants’ warehouse they find a hoard of weapons and OreSeur, the kandra who has been playing Lord Renoux, now wearing Kelsier’s bones. He gives Vin atium, a note, the Eleventh Metal and a picture of a flower Mare treasured. Dockson arms the skaa, and Vin swallows her metals, the Eleventh among them, and goes to the palace.

At Kredik Shaw she talks four guards into joining the rebels, disables the Inquisitor Kar, and blinds another with pewter dust and stabs him with a thrown glass dagger. Inside the little building are rugs, furs, a hearth, and an old bald man of about seventy by the fire. She is caught, sees an image she does not understand when she burns the Eleventh Metal, and is knocked out. Forced to burn aluminum, which strips away her metals, she is brought before the Lord Ruler in a throne room walled by one vast circular window of stained-glass mists, where the Inquisitors use her to prove that the Lord Prelan fathered half-skaa children, and murder him. Straff flees Luthadel; Elend stays, sends his soldiers to help hold Keep Lekal, and goes to surrender himself to the skaa.

In the cells a beaten Sazed swallows a hidden pewtermind, snaps his bonds and frees Vin, and Elend, told that Valette is the Lord Ruler’s prisoner, arrives with six guards to rescue her. Vin finds a vial of metals, cuts down the Ministry soldiers, sends Sazed off with Elend, and goes to kill the Lord Ruler. Sanderson calls the chapter her character climax: she chooses to stay with Sazed rather than flee alone, and learns that part of not being abandoned is not abandoning your friends.

At dawn, as the rebellion closes on the palace, Vin crashes in through the stained-glass wall. Her first attack fails, and the Inquisitor Kar pins her. The Lord Ruler summons his other Inquisitors and only Marsh comes, made an Inquisitor himself, having pulled the linchpin spikes from the rest as they slept. He kills Kar the same way, but the Lord Ruler has no spike to pull. The Lord Ruler Pushes on every metal in the room, bares the Feruchemical atium bracelets piercing his upper arms, and rips out her mother’s earring. Then Vin draws on the mists themselves, Pulls the bracers from his arms, and he ages before her eyes. Sazed brings her metals and a plain wooden spear.

“I was your god, even if you couldn’t see it.”

He is Rashek, the packman of the logbook, and the logbook was never his: it belonged to the man the Terris took for their Hero, whom Rashek killed before taking the Well’s power for himself. Vin kills him with the spear; he dies, Sanderson notes, the way Kelsier did, with a spear in the chest.

Afterwards Sazed, Marsh and Vin talk over Rashek’s powers, the making of Inquisitors, the Deepness and the Lord Ruler’s warning; Kelsier has left OreSeur’s contract to Vin. Elend’s speech has held the city together, and he is its king. Vin had meant to turn away from a life with him. Instead she drops through the still-broken skylight into his rooms and embraces him. Ash still falls, the mists still come, and nobody yet knows how to run what is left of an empire.

On a misty tenement street at night a skaa man with arms spread calls to frightened neighbours stepping out of their doorways, while a young woman in a mistcloak and a tall robed man watch from an alley mouth. — **I · 28 Into the Mists** That night Vin and Sazed watch a skaa man call his neighbours out into the mists, swearing that Kelsier appeared to him hours after his death. At last the crew understands the plan: Kelsier meant to become a martyr. In his warehouse they find a hoard of weapons and OreSeur, the kandra who played Renoux, wearing Kelsier’s bones, with a gift for Vin: atium, a note, the Eleventh Metal and Mare’s flower.

In a torchlit dungeon corridor a bruised young woman with a small knife stands in an open cell door as a rumpled young nobleman bursts in at the far end with a few armoured guards. — **I · 29 The Cells** Captured and forced to burn aluminum, which strips away her metals, Vin watches the Inquisitors use her to prove that the Lord Prelan fathered half-skaa children, and murder him. Back in the cells a beaten Sazed swallows a hidden pewtermind, snaps his bonds and frees her. Then Elend, who had gone to surrender to the rebels, arrives with six guards to rescue Valette. Vin finds a vial of metals.

A young woman in a flaring mistcloak bursts into a vast round throne room through a wall of stained glass in a storm of coloured shards, while a tall pale man in black and white turns on the dais to watch. — **I · 30 Through the Glass** At dawn, as the skaa rebellion closes on the palace, the Lord Ruler hands the Steel Ministry to his Inquisitors under Kar. Vin Pushes herself in through the throne room’s great circular wall of stained glass and charges him. Burning the Eleventh Metal, she strikes at the shadow it shows her, and nothing happens. Kar seizes her and holds her down.

A tall, gaunt bald Inquisitor in grey robes, steel discs in his eye sockets, steps alone through a dark doorway into a vast throne room lit by coloured light. — **I · 31 The Last Inquisitor** The Lord Ruler summons the rest of his Inquisitors, and only one comes through the back door. It is Marsh, the brother the crew believed flayed, made an Inquisitor, and he has pulled the linchpin spikes from the others as they slept. He kills Kar the same way, then reaches for the Lord Ruler’s back. There is no spike there.

In a glass-strewn throne room a tall man stripped to the waist, suddenly aged, staggers as two metal bracers fly from his arms, while a young woman with arms flung wide draws the mist into herself. — **I · 32 The Bracers** The Lord Ruler Pushes on every metal in the room, even inside Vin, and tears off his coat to show his rings and the Feruchemical atium bracelets piercing his upper arms. His Push rips out the earring her mother gave her. Then Vin draws on the mists themselves and Pulls the bracers free, and he ages before her eyes. He is Rashek, the packman of the logbook. Vin kills him with a plain wooden spear.

In a book-cluttered study a young woman in a mistcloak has just dropped through a broken skylight, and a rumpled young nobleman rises from his desk, the two of them a step apart, looking at each other. — **I · 33 The Skylight** Afterwards Sazed, Marsh and Vin talk over what Rashek could do, how Inquisitors are made, the kandra (Kelsier has left OreSeur’s contract to Vin) and the Deepness, and Elend’s speech has held the city together. Vin had meant to turn her back on a life with him. Instead she drops through the still-broken skylight into Elend’s rooms and embraces him.

The metals in this book

Allomancy, the eight basic metals, in four pairs: iron Pulls and steel Pushes on nearby metal; tin sharpens the senses and pewter gives strength, speed and healing; zinc Riots (inflames) emotions and brass Soothes (dampens) them; copper hides Allomancy inside a “coppercloud” and bronze senses it, which is Seeking. An Allomancer swallows the metal and “burns” it, and to flare is to burn hard. A Misting burns one metal; a Mistborn, like Vin and Kelsier, burns them all.
The higher metals. Gold shows the self you might have been. Atium, mined only at the Pits of Hathsin, shows a few seconds of the future and makes its burner almost unbeatable. By the end Vin has met aluminum, which strips an Allomancer’s metals, and burned the Eleventh Metal, which shows her an image she cannot understand.
Made visible. Burning iron or steel shows blue lines running to every nearby source of metal; Inquisitors see the world through such lines. The mists curl faintly around Allomancers but are pushed away by Inquisitors using their powers, a clue Sanderson planted and promised to explain in the third book.
Costs. Running too long on pewter, “pewter dragging,” leaves Vin’s head aching fifteen days later; the Lord Ruler’s Soothing can be felt even through a coppercloud, and Inquisitors can see through one.
Feruchemy. Sazed stores attributes in metalminds to draw on later: his eyesight in a tinmind (hence the spectacles), strength in pewterminds. He uses up a whole metalmind making the trip from Renoux’s mansion the night Vin is wounded, and a swallowed pewtermind breaks his bonds in the cells. The Lord Ruler’s bracers are Feruchemical atium; without them he ages at once.
Hemalurgy, which this book never names: the Steel Inquisitors carry spikes, two through the eyes and a linchpin between the shoulder blades whose removal kills them. Marsh, who has become one, calls the making of an Inquisitor messy.

Toward the screen

No film of The Final Empire exists yet. On 28 January 2026 The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Apple TV had won the screen rights to Sanderson’s Cosmere, with Mistborn planned as feature films and Stormlight as television, and Sanderson set to write, produce and hold approvals.
The first Apple film adapts this book. On 28 July 2026 Sanderson announced that he had finished the first draft of the screenplay, tying it to the novel’s twentieth anniversary; he has called the job condensing a 200,000-word book into a two-hour movie.
Since then Apple has read the draft and sent notes, and Sanderson is revising. As of October 2026 there is no director, no cast and no release date, and he expects filming to be a few years away.
Earlier attempts at this book went nowhere. DMG Entertainment took the Cosmere rights in 2016 and in January 2017 hired F. Scott Frazier to adapt Mistborn: The Final Empire; no film followed, and by the end of 2024 the screen rights were Sanderson’s again.
Nothing has been filmed, so there are no changed or cut scenes to compare. The book has been dramatized for audio: GraphicAudio’s full-cast version came out in three parts in 2013–14.

Continuity notes

Vin starts as a sixteen-year-old thief and ends as a trained Mistborn who has killed the Lord Ruler. Her mother’s earring is torn out in the last fight, OreSeur’s contract is hers, and she chooses Elend.
Kelsier dies in Fountain Square (ch. 34). OreSeur wears his bones, and a skaa man swears Kelsier came to him in the mists that very night; from here on he is a legend and a memory.
Elend Venture goes from rumpled heir to king of Luthadel, still in rumpled suits; his father Straff has fled the city.
Marsh is a Steel Inquisitor, spikes through his eyes, and on the crew’s side. Sazed recovers from his beating and means to go home to Terris.
Dockson, Breeze, Ham, Clubs and Spook all survive; Dockson armed the skaa, and Spook was freed from the execution cages.
Dead: the Lord Ruler; the Inquisitors Bendal and Kar and the rest Marsh killed; Shan Elariel; the Lord Prelan Tevidian; Camon, Ulef and Milev; most of the skaa army.
The world has not changed: ash still falls by day and the mists still come at night. The Deepness, and the Lord Ruler’s dying warning, are unexplained.

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