Chapter 15

At dawn, the mists linger unnaturally and then burn away under the red sun, leaving Vin unsettled. She notes how the mists seem to avoid her Allomancy and behave with intent, unlike normal weather. Remembering debates with Sazed, she distrusts scholarly explanations and senses a personal estrangement from the mists since touching the Well’s power.

In camp, Elend and Ham privately argue over strategy. Elend insists they cannot keep sheltering the army in tents each morning, as mist-time delays will cost lives and threaten their campaign’s timing toward Fadrex. Ham protests exposing soldiers to potential mist sickness and death, but Vin sides with Elend, citing tactical vulnerability if attacked during morning mists.

After Elend departs to ready the barges, Vin checks on Human, the koloss under her command, who has wandered near camp. Human expresses a desire for a “house” and challenges human behavior, revealing a crude logic about fear and violence. When Vin presses about the mists, Human first dismisses them as nonlethal like rain or ash, then admits, “I hate it because it hates me,” implying the mists bear animosity toward koloss—and, by extension, toward Vin.

Shaken, Vin recalls once drawing power from the mists to defeat the Lord Ruler, her many failed attempts to repeat it, and the mist spirit that both threatened and saved Elend. Weighing Human’s intuition against her experiences—the mists’ retreat from buildings, their lethal effects on some, their recoil from her—Vin reaches a decisive conclusion: the mists, the Deepness itself, are her enemy.