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"You'd have to expose yourself too much to actually hit h to stay out of your reach Can't we stop this and get on to more important matters? Aren't you even a bit curious as to what I've been doing these last four years?"

Vin backed into a crouch, like a cat preparing to pounce, and smiled

"What?" the i paid off Behind the the cavern into darkness But Vin, with her ability to pierce copperclouds, could still sense her enemy She'd dropped her coin pouch back when she'd first sensed so of her approach

She launched herself forward, intending to grab her enemy around the neck and pull him into a pin The Allomantic pulses didn't let her see him, but they did tell her exactly where he was That would be enough of an edge

She rong He dodged her just as easily as he had before

Vin fell still Tin, she thought He can hear e shelf, then attacked again as the crash of the falling shelf echoed loudly in the cha cans across the floor

The i Somehow, he always sen1sed her The cavern fell silent Neither sound nor light bounced off its walls Vin crouched, the fingers of one hand resting lightly on the cool stone before her She could feel the thu across her in waves She focused on it, trying to differentiate the metals that had produced it Yet, the pulses felt opaque Muddled

There's so familiar about thehtI thought he was the mist spirit

There was a reason the pulses felt fa her connect the figure with Reen, she could see what she'd been an to beat quickly, and for the first tian to feel afraid The pulses felt just like the ones she'd felt a year ago The pulses that had led her to the Well of Ascension

"Why have you cohter It rang in the eh no footsteps rew enor They washed across Vin, unbounded by the cavern's echoes, an unreal sound that passed through things both living and dead She stepped backward in the darkness, and nearly tripped over the shelves she'd knocked down

I should have known you wouldn't be fooled, a kindly voice said in her head The thing's voice She'd heard it only once before, a year ago, when she'd released it from its imprisonment in the Well of Ascension

"What do you want?" she whispered

You knohat I want You've always known

And she did She had sensed it in theRuin, she called it It had very simple desires To see the world come to its end

"I will stop you," she said Yet, it was hard to not feel foolish speaking the words to a force she did not understand, a thing that existed beyond h this time the sound was only inside her head She could still feel Ruin pulsing--though not from any one specific place It surrounded her She forced herself to stand up straight

Ah, Vin, Ruin said, its voice almost fatherly in tone You act as if I were your enes I love"

And is an ending always bad? it asked Must not all things, even worlds, someday end?

"There is no need to hasten that end," Vin said "No reason to force it"

All things are subject to their own nature, Vin, Ruin said, see to flow around her She could feel its touch upon her--wet and delicate, likewhat I a could end And therefore, nothing could grow I aht life itself?

Vin fell silent

Do not mourn because the day of this world's end has arrived, Ruin said That end was ordained the very day of the world's conception There is a beauty in death--the beauty of finality, the beauty of co is truly complete until the day it is finally destroyed

"Enough," Vin snapped, feeling alone and s me Why have you come here?"

Come here? it asked Why do you ask that?

"What is your purpose in appearing now?" Vin said "Have you siloat over my imprisonment?"

I have not "just appeared," Vin, Ruin said Why, I have never left I've always been with you A part of you

"Nonsense," Vin said "You only just revealed yourself"

I revealed myself to your eyes, yes, Ruin said But, I see that you do not understand I've always been with you, even when you could not see me

It paused, and there was silence, both outside and inside of her head

When you're alone, no one can betray you, a voice whispered in the back of her mind Reen's voice The voice she heard soranted that the voice was just part of her psyche--a leftover fros An instinct