Secret History recap

Kelsier dies at the Lord Ruler's hands, refuses to move on into the afterlife, and stays. What follows is the whole war for the world seen from the other side of death: he meets the failing god Preservation, learns the true nature of Allomancy, atium, and the mists, and discovers that a second god, Ruin, is about to be released. He is present when Vin opens the Well of Ascension and grasps at the power himself, and afterwards is left as a spirit who cannot be seen or heard by anyone alive. He travels the realm behind the world, meets scholars from other worlds, and robs a society of them of a store of divine power in order to keep existing. He works out how Ruin sees through the people it has marked and struggles to get that warning to the living. At the end he watches Vin destroy Ruin and die, meets her briefly, and lets her go on without him. Sazed, ascending as Harmony, returns Kelsier to a body on terms Kelsier does not much like.

This novella runs alongside the whole Mistborn trilogy and assumes you have finished all three books. It begins at the moment of Kelsier's death near the end of The Final Empire and continues through the events of The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, including their endings, which it depends on and states outright. Read it after The Hero of Ages. In brief, for a reader who has: Kelsier, a half-skaa Mistborn, raised Luthadel against the immortal Lord Ruler and had himself killed publicly to become a martyr; Vin killed the Lord Ruler and later, at the Well of Ascension, released the power there as a forged prophecy instructed, freeing the god Ruin; the world then began to die under ash and quake until Vin drew in the mists, which are the body of the god Preservation, and destroyed Ruin at the cost of her own life; Elend was killed moments later by Marsh; and Sazed took up both powers, became Harmony, and remade the world. This book is what Kelsier was doing throughout all of that.

Kelsier is killed by the Lord Ruler in the square before Kredik Shaw, exactly as he intended, and then finds that he has not gone anywhere. Something is pulling at him, an opening into somewhere beyond, and he simply refuses it, holding onto the world by stubbornness. What is left of him lingers as a spirit that the living cannot see, hear, or be touched by. He is met by a shabby, half-coherent figure who calls himself Fuzz and who is clearly not human, and who tells him that hanging on like this is neither normal nor safe. Kelsier watches the uprising he engineered tear through Luthadel, watches his crew survive it, and watches Vin fight and kill the Lord Ruler, unable to help or interfere in any way. The role of the Survivor, which he built as a lie to be used after his death, begins to grow into something he no longer controls.

Kelsier learns what Fuzz actually is: the power the Terris called Preservation, a god worn down and coming apart, who long ago spent nearly all of himself to imprison a second god called Ruin. Kelsier is told the truth behind everything he built his life on, that Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy are ways of drawing on the two of them, that atium and the mists are not what anyone believed, and that the Lord Ruler was only ever a man who reached the Well of Ascension first. He also meets Ruin's own vessel, Ati, who is courteous, friendly, and entirely certain of what is coming. Kelsier watches the year following the empire's fall from outside it, and is present at the Well of Ascension when Vin takes the power and, following the forged inscription, gives it up. Ruin is freed. Kelsier, who has spent his death looking for a lever, seizes the moment and grabs at the power himself.

Holding the power of the Well is beyond anything a human mind can sustain, and Kelsier cannot keep it. He is left as he was, a spirit trapped in the realm that lies behind the physical world, watching the living carry on without him and steadily losing the strength that keeps him coherent at all. He begins to learn the rules of the place he now inhabits: how the world looks from behind, how Investiture behaves, what a person like him actually is, and why he is decaying. Preservation is gone, Ruin is loose, and Kelsier has no body, no allies, and no way to make himself heard. He starts, characteristically, by looking for something he can steal.

Kelsier travels through the realm behind the world, discovering that his own is one of many and that people from elsewhere come and go through it. He meets Khriss, a scholar from another world who studies the gods and their powers, and her companion Nazh, and learns from them how much larger the situation is than the war he died in. He also learns of the Ire, a society of such travellers who have insulated themselves from this world's gods and quietly accumulated a store of divine power for their own use. Kelsier, needing exactly that to keep from fading, cons and robs them of it. The theft keeps him in existence and makes him enemies far outside anything his crew ever faced.

As the world dies under ash and quake, Kelsier follows the last war from the far side and works out the thing that matters most: Ruin can see and speak through any body carrying a metal spike, which means it has been reading the crew's plans through people they trust, and through one small object Vin has worn since childhood. Getting that warning to anyone alive costs him nearly everything he has left. In the end he watches Vin draw in the mists, Ascend, and destroy Ruin, dying with it, and Marsh kill Elend moments afterward. Kelsier finally meets Vin face to face, and she does not stay: she and Elend go on into the Beyond together while he, who refused that passage on the day he died, remains behind. Sazed takes up both powers, becomes Harmony, and repairs the world. He knows precisely what Kelsier is, and instead of leaving him a fading spirit he returns him to a living body, on conditions Kelsier resents and did not negotiate. Kelsier ends the book alive, bound to the world he helped save, and already looking for his next opening.

Kelsier is present, unseen, through the last battle of the war for the world. He works out how Ruin has been watching everyone it has any hold over, and expends everything he has trying to get that knowledge to people who cannot hear him. When Vin draws in Preservation's power, destroys Ruin, and dies doing it, Kelsier meets her spirit at last and is given a few moments with her. She does not stay: she and Elend pass on into the Beyond together, and Kelsier, who has refused that passage from the first page, cannot follow them and does not try. Sazed takes up both powers and becomes Harmony, remaking the world. He knows exactly what Kelsier is and what he has been doing, and he returns Kelsier to a living body rather than leaving him as he is. The terms are not the ones Kelsier would have chosen, and he is bound to the world he saved rather than free of it. He is alive, unfinished, and already looking for the next angle.