Mistborn #03 The Hero of Ages

I think. What is belief—what is faith—if you don't continue in it after failure. . . .
    How innocent he had been.
    Better to trust and be betrayed, Kelsier seemed to whisper. It had been one of the Survivor's mottos. Better to love and be hurt.
    Sazed gripped the tome. It was such a meaningless thing. Its text could be changed by Ruin at any time. And do I believe in that? Sazed thought with frustration. Do I have faith in this Ruin, but not in something better?
    He stood quietly in the room, holding the book, listening to Breeze and Ten-Soon outside. The book was a symbol to him. It represented what he had once been. It represented failure. He glanced upward again. Please, he thought. I want to believe. I really do. I just . . . I just need something. Something more than shadows and memories. Something real.
    Something true. Please?
    "Farewell, Soother," TenSoon said. "Give my regards to the Announcer." Then, Sazed heard Breeze thump away. TenSoon padded down the hallway on his quieter dog's feet.
    Announcer. . . .
    Sazed froze.
    That word. . . .
    Sazed stood, stunned for a moment. Then, he threw his door open and burst into the hallway. The door slammed back against the wall, making Breeze jump. TenSoon stopped at the end of the hallway, near the stairs. He turned back, looking at Sazed.
    "What did you call me?" Sazed demanded.
    "The Announcer," TenSoon said. "You are, are you not, the one who pointed out Lady Vin as the Hero of Ages? That, then, is your title."
    Sazed fell to his knees, slapping his tome—the one he had written with Tindwyl—on the floor before him. He flipped through the pages, locating one in particular, penned in his own hand. I thought myself the Holy Witness, it said, the prophet foretold to discover the Hero of Ages. They were the words of Kwaan, the man who had originally named Alendi the Hero. From these writings, which were their only clues about the original Terris religion, Sazed and the others had gleaned what little they knew of the prophecies about the Hero of Ages.
    "What is this?" Breeze asked, leaning down, scanning the words. "Hum. Looks like you've got the wrong term, my dear doggie. Not 'Announcer' at all, but 'Holy Witness.' "
    Sazed looked up. "This is one of the passages that Ruin changed, Breeze," he said quietly. "When I wrote it, it read differently—but Ruin altered it, trying to trick me and Vin into fulfilling his prophecies. The skaa had started to call me the Holy Witness, their own term. So Ruin retroactively changed Kwaan's writings so that they seemed prophetic and reference me."
    "Is that so?" Breeze asked, rubbing his chin. "What did it say before?"
    Sazed ignored the question, instead meeting TenSoon's canine eyes. "How did you know?" he demanded. "How do you know the words of the ancient Terris prophecies?"
    TenSoon fell back on his haunches. "It strikes me as odd, Terrisman. There's one great inconsistency in this all, a problem no one has ever thought to point out. What happened to the packmen who traveled with Rashek and Alendi up to the Well of Ascension?"
    Rashek. The man who had become the Lord Ruler.
    Breeze stood up straight. "That's easy, kandra," he said, waving his cane. "Everyone knows that when the Lord Ruler took the throne of Khlennium, he made his trusted friends into noblemen. That's why the nobility of the Final Empire were so pampered—they were the descendants of Rashek's good friends."
    TenSoon sat quietly.
    No , Sazed thought with wonder. No . . . that couldn't be! "He couldn't have made those packmen into nobles."
    "Why ever not?" Breeze asked.
    "Because the nobility gained Allomancy," Sazed said, standing. "Rashek's friends were Feruchemists. If he'd made them into noblemen, then . . ."
    "Then they could have challenged him," TenSoon said. "They could have become both Allomancers and Feruchemists as he was, and had his same powers."
    "Yes," Sazed said. "He spent ten centuries trying to breed Feruchemy out of the Terris population—all in fear that someday someone would be born with both Feruchemy and Allomancy! His friends who went to the Well with him would have been dangerous, since they were obviously powerful Feruchemists, and they knew what Rashek had done to Alendi. Rashek would have had to do something else with them. Something to sequester them, perhaps even kill them. . . ."
    "No," TenSoon said. "He didn't kill them. You call the Father a monster, but he was not an evil man. He didn't kill his friends, though he did