Mistborn #03 The Hero of Ages

thinking of rebellion. Most of the world is in chaos, if you hear the reports! Shouldn't we just be happy with what we've got?"
    The Survivor? Sazed thought. Kelsier? But, they seem to have given him a new title. Survivor of the Flames?
    "You're starting to twitch, Sazed," Breeze whispered. "You might as well just ask. No harm in asking, right?"
    No harm in asking.
    "The . . . Survivor of the Flames?" Sazed asked. "Why do you call Kelsier that?"
    "Not Kelsier," one of the men said. "The other Survivor. The new one."
    "The Survivor of Hathsin came to overthrow the Lord Ruler," one of the men said. "So, can't we assume the Survivor of the Flames has come to overthrow Quellion? Maybe we should listen to these men."
    "If the Survivor is here to overthrow Quellion," another man said, "then he won't need the help of these types. They just want the city for themselves."
    "Excuse me," Sazed said. "But . . . might we meet this new Survivor?"
    The group of men shared looks.
    "Please," Sazed said. "I was a friend to the Survivor of Hathsin. I should very much like to meet a man whom you have deemed worthy of Kelsier's stature."
    "Tomorrow," one of the men said. "Quellion tries to keep the dates quiet, but they get out. There will be executions near Marketpit. Be there."

Even now, I can barely grasp the scope of all this. The events surrounding the end of the world seem even larger than the Final Empire and the people within it. I sense shards of something from long ago, a fractured presence, something spanning the void.
    I have delved and searched, and have only been able to come up with a single name: Adonasium. Who, or what, it was, I do not yet know.
    39
    TENSOON SAT ON HIS HAUNCHES. Horrified.
    Ash rained down like shards of a broken sky, floating, making the very air look pocked and sickly. Even where he sat, atop a windswept hill, there was a layer of ash smothering the plant life. Some trees had branches broken by the weight of repeated ash pileups.
    How could they not see? he thought. How can they hide in their hole of a Homeland, content to let the land above die?
    Yet, TenSoon had lived for hundreds of years, and a part of him understood the tired complacency of the First and Second Generations. At times he'd felt the same thing himself. A desire to simply wait. To spend years idly, content in the Homeland. He'd seen the outside world—seen more of it than any human or koloss would ever know. What need had he of experiencing more?
    The Seconds had seen him as more orthodox and obedient than his brethren, all because he had continually wanted to leave the Homeland and serve Contracts. The Second Generation had always misunderstood him. TenSoon hadn't served out of a desire to be obedient. He'd done it out of fear: fear that he'd become content and apathetic like the Seconds and begin to think that the outside world didn't matter to the kandra people.
    He shook his head, then rose to all fours and loped off down the side of the hill, scattering ash into the air with each bound. As frightening as things had gotten, he was happy for one thing. The wolfhound's body felt good on him. There was such a power in it—a capacity for movement—that no human form could match. It was almost as if this were the form he always should have worn. What better body for a kandra with an incurable wanderlust? A kandra who had left his Homeland behind more often than any other, serving under the hated hands of human masters, all because of his fear of complacency?
    He made his way through the thin forest cover, over hills, hoping that the blanket of ash wouldn't make it too difficult for him to navigate. The falling ash did affect the kandra people—it affected them greatly. They had legends about this exact event. What good was the First Contract, what good was the waiting, the protection of the Trust? To most of the kandra, apparently, these things had become a point unto themselves.
    Yet, these things meant something. They had an origin. TenSoon hadn't been alive back then. However, he had known the First Generation and been raised by the Second. He grew up during days when the First Contract—the Trust, the Resolution—had been more than just words. The First Contract was a set of instructions. Actions to take when the world began to fall. Not just ceremony, and not just metaphor. He knew that its contents frightened some of the kandra. For them, it was better that the First Contract be a philosophical, abstract thing—for if it