In the months after his escape from the Pits of Hathsin, Kelsier is a broken man. The scars on his arms are fresh, his wife Mare is dead, and the rage that will one day fuel a revolution is still buried beneath numbness and grief. His only companion is Gemmel, an unstable Mistborn who teaches through ambush, mockery, and violence. Gemmel drags Kelsier to the city of Mantiz in the Western Dominance, where a nobleman named Lord Shezler has been abducting skaa for brutal experiments in pursuit of a theoretical eleventh Allomantic metal. The infiltration of Keep Shezler is Kelsier's first real test as a Mistborn - not the charming con artist he once was, but something rawer and more dangerous. What he finds in the keep's basement changes him. The hollow eyes of the imprisoned skaa, the casual cruelty of noble society laid bare without pretence - it breaks through his numbness and replaces it with purpose. A short story set on Scadrial in the Cosmere, bridging the gap between Kelsier's imprisonment and the events of The Final Empire. This is where the Survivor of Hathsin begins to become the Survivor of legend.
