Contents
Chapter 45
Overview
Vin confronts a figure wearing Reen’s face in the Fadrex cache and tests whether it is a kandra. After a futile fight in darkness, she recognizes the familiar Allomantic pulses of the power from the Well and identifies it as Ruin. Ruin reveals it has long influenced her thoughts as Reen’s voice, reframing Vin’s paranoia and raising the stakes of its manipulation.
Summary
An epigraph explains that Hemalurgic spikes stacked onto an existing Allomantic ability markedly increase power, clarifying how Inquisitors could pierce copperclouds.
In the Fadrex cache cavern, Vin faces a man who looks and acts like Reen. She assumes he is a kandra and demands news of TenSoon, then blasts him with duralumin-enhanced emotional Allomancy. When he resists, she realizes he is not kandra and attacks, noting his Allomantic agility and lack of coins.
As the lantern dies, Vin uses Allomantic pulses to locate him in the dark but cannot land a hold. The pulses feel muddled yet familiar. She recognizes them as the same thumping she sensed at the Well of Ascension and grows afraid.
Laughter fills the cavern and a kindly voice enters Vin’s mind: Ruin. It surrounds her without footsteps, asserting that endings are natural and essential. Vin rejects the fatalism and demands its purpose.
Ruin claims it has never left her, revealing that the cynical “Reen” voice guiding her since childhood was its influence. The revelation reframes Vin’s lifelong paranoia as Ruin’s manipulation, escalating the threat and exposing the depth of its reach over minds and perceptions.
Who Appears
- VinImprisoned Mistborn who confronts a Reen lookalike, deduces it is Ruin, and learns it has long influenced her thoughts.
- RuinShapeshifts into Reen’s likeness, evades Vin, reveals philosophical aims, and admits to manipulating her inner ‘Reen’ voice.
- ReenVin’s deceased brother; appears as memories and the long-standing inner voice Ruin claims to have imitated.