Epilogue
POV: lestibournes
Summary
Spook wakes in the lamplit storage cavern beneath Urteau from what feels like a nightmare and finds himself, impossibly, whole. The burns and ruined sensory-overload his tin-flaring binge gave him are gone. He stands; the refugees around him gasp; he walks among them to find his friends. Beldre catches up in a white dress and asks what happened. He only smiles. They make their way to the front of the cavern where Breeze — of course — is sitting at his customary table with a glass of wine, having scrounged up furniture in a refugee bolt-hole. *You're looking well, my boy,* Breeze says. *Shall we then?*
They climb the trapdoor at the top of the cavern. Light leaks around the edges. Beldre warns that the scouts said the city above was burning — but Spook pushes through anyway, and finds no city.
He finds a field of grass. Green grass. Thigh-high. Under a sky he cannot remember the color of — clear blue, no ash, no smoke. The sun overhead is bright but no longer cruel. *Now, there's a sight,* Breeze says, climbing out beside him, and then dryly: *Blue. Not a hint of ash. Very odd indeed. I'll bet Vin had something to do with this mess. That girl never could do things the proper way.* Beldre follows. They walk forward through the grass in silent wonder, and then Spook sees motion on the horizon — *people.*
He and Beldre hurry forward. *Spook,* the voice calls, *kid, is that you?* It is Ham. He last knew he was in Fadrex, hundreds of miles south; now he is here. They embrace. Another trapdoor opens nearby and Ham's wife and child climb out beside it; he rushes off to gather them in. More people are emerging from other holes scattered across the meadow, six of them, the openings arranged in a deliberate pattern. Spook makes his way from hole to hole until he reaches one cut as a slanted cave entrance rather than a trapdoor. Demoux is standing there, healed, with a Terris woman on his arm. *I saw him,* the general is telling a small audience. *The Survivor — hanging in the sky, glowing. Color moved through the air, and the ground spun and shifted, and the land remade itself. He came. Just like Sazed said he would.* *Sazed?* Spook asks. *Where is he?* Demoux does not know.
The pattern of holes has a center. Spook leads Beldre toward it. The wind bends the grass in waves. Ham and Breeze catch up, already arguing about something trivial — Ham holding his child on one arm and his wife's shoulders with the other. At the center Spook freezes, holds up a hand: there is *color* in the grass. He steps in among them, small bell-shaped plants on long straight stalks, faces lifted to drink the sun. *Beautiful,* Beldre whispers. He recognises them. *Flowers,* he thinks. The flowers from the picture Mare gave Kelsier and Kelsier gave Vin and Vin gave Sazed. Kelsier's dream made literal.
At the very center of the flowers, two people lie. Vin in her mistcloak. Elend in a brilliant white uniform with cape, healed of his beheading. They are holding hands. They are dead. Ham and Breeze cry out and bend over the bodies. Spook sees the leather tome lying half-hidden in the grass beside them and picks it up. He recognises the careful handwriting. The first line reads: *I am, unfortunately, the Hero of Ages.* A slip of paper drops out. On one side, faded, Mare's flower. On the other, a letter in the same hand.
*Spook,* it begins, *I tried to bring them back, but apparently fixing the bodies doesn't return the souls. I will get better at this with time, I expect.* Sazed has spoken with Vin and Elend; they are happy where they are; they deserve a rest. The leather book is a short record of how the world ended and was reborn; the much larger pile of books in the grass nearby contains every metalmind verbatim — the entire Keeper archive, preserved against Sazed's own forgetting. Rebuilding will be hard but easier than what came before. More people fled into the caverns than Spook will believe. Rashek planned very well for this day; he suffered terribly beneath Ruin's hand, but he was a good man with honorable intentions. The message Spook sent via Captain Goradel saved them all in the end. The people will need leadership in the years to come and will likely look to him. *I have made you Mistborn,* Sazed writes — and healed the damage from tin-flaring — *at Kelsier's request. A parting gift from him.* *Watch over them for me.* A postscript notes, almost lightly, that there are still two Allomantic metals nobody yet knows about. Spook might want to poke around.
Spook looks up into the empty blue sky and folds the paper into his pocket. *You look troubled,* Beldre says. *No,* he says. *No, I'm not troubled. In fact, I actually think everything is going to be all right. Finally.*