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The Lord Ruler, their great God and creator, was dead.
It was the world's biggest secret. Now decades past, the Lord Ruler had known his end was coming. After a thousand year wait, he had intended to take up the power of the Well of Ascension once more. Time was more patient and cunning, yet he had enough left to mold his heir, his second in command, one of his personal mistborn. With his plans in place, he had left Reverence to serve his interests, to enact his plans. Now, the sun was further away, the ashmounts less active. All of those great mistakes he had made before were rectified. At least, they were improved. Just as when he had taken the power of the Well the first time, Reverence could not comprehend the scale of things in that brief moment. Improved, not mended. Most importantly, he had seen the weakness of his master, his god, and planted seeds to correct them.
A thousand years was simply impossible for anyone to survive. So, the Mistborn had been made. There had been mistborn before The Death and the retaking of the Well, an event so pivotal and yet so secret it had no imposing name. They were diluted, weak. The Mistborn were the apex. Preservation's power condensed into a superior vessel. With the Lord Ruler gone and Reverence in need of a way to control the empire thrust into his lap, the Mistborn had been left in control, with himself as one of them, reshaped into something primal, dangerous.
Just as the skaa outnumbered the nobles, the Mistborn were few in number. Most cities could boast a single Mistborn protector. Some a pair. Luthadel had only Reverence, feigning obedience to a dead man. However, Mistborn was all that they were known as. They were not God. They were simply his hand, his finger tips, guiding the world as it grew under his improvements, if only slightly. They kept the mists at bay, destroyed the creatures that would take souls in the night. All they asked for was that any Mistborn, a true Mistborn, be surrendered to them.
The truth was more simple. The Mistborn kept the nobles in line. They snuffed out troublemakers and made sure that allomancy was not allowed to spread to the skaa. They did their duty and took their payment, the one thing the Reverence had given them to truly want. The power of Preservation drew them to each other. For every Mistborn, there was an opposite, a fated second half. They were to meet and continue the line of power. Reverence had thought that he was exempt, shaped by the mists as something different than the true Mistborn he had seeded among the population. There would be no other half, and when time finally caught up to him, after however long the Well had deemed to give him, he would find another to shape in his image. Reverence was to be alone.
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Rumors were useless. They were made up to buy real information, to weaken opponents, to turn the Mistborn into would-be assassins. No, Reverence only worked on fact. And the fact was that he had caught a scent in the markets.
Reverence always burned Tin. His faces were not something that everyone knew, but enough had a general idea. It made the possibility of an attack far too high to let their senses be as dull as a human. Normally, it was his hearing that mattered. Today, it was his nose.
A woman brushed past him as he crossed a street. Annoying, but nothing he would take action over. She would fade from his memory before he left this street. Then, it hit him.
The scent was a brick wall, making those walking behind him ram into his back. He burned Pewter out of instinct as they nearly toppled him. He could care less. All he could smell was sweetness. Not cloying, but subtle and natural. Like someone had added a drop of honey to a bouquet of flowers. If it had stopped there, he might have ignored it. The scent went deeper. It curled around his heart, squeezed his lungs, made his blood pound in his veins. It was a Mistborn.
When he turned, flaring Pewter as he threw the crowd to the side, the woman was already gone. It had not been her scent anyway. If it was her, Reverence could have tracked her with ease. It seemed that his assumptions about his nature, about what the Well had done, were fundamentally wrong all these years. Reverence was on the hunt.
That was how he had ended up out so late into the night. Not that it was strange. Mistborn were more Preservation than any other allomancer. The mist was like their own flesh and blood, a welcome companion. He had needed the company. A dozen rooftops, a dozen dozen. Every where he had hunted for that scent. But, this was the best time to search for her. She would be drawn to the mist just as much as he was.
The myriad tassels of Rev's cloak whipped in the wind as he moved from object to object, Steelpushing and Ironpulling his way across the noble fortresses of Luthadel, even daring to go within their walls. It was when Rev nearly considered giving up for the night, returning to the tower and finding some outlet for his anger.
However, there was one fortress he never fully explored. One face was cut off from the public, hidden away by the walls. Pushing and pulling would never get one there alone. There was only one way to look.
Reaching into his pouch, Rev let a single coin slip out. He Pushed it, sending it blasting to the earth below. Then, the moment it made contact, Rev was airborne, moving in great leaps and bounds with each coin he dropped. As he closed the distance with the building he had in mind, the Mistborn went over what he knew. A well behaved family, never drawing Mistborn attention, rarely lashing out at any others. The rumors, as unreliable as they were, said they had a daughter who never made appearances. There was simply no way it was this obvious.
So, Rev decided to make rumor into fact.
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As Melione extended her fingers into the mist, into the cold night air, there was a sudden rush of air. In a blur of black tassels, shreds of cloth that draped over the rough shape of a man, the hand was met with something warm.
As the light managed to pierce the mist and the dark, Melione was greeted with the sight of a much larger hand wrapped around her own. It held her like she was made of glass. Attached to the hand was an arm, wrapped in the same black cloth. The cloak was tight around his shoulders, a high collar clipped to obscure most of the face. The hood was pull high and in the low light of the candle there was nothing visible, not even the eyes of this new person.
The head leaned forward, bowing over her hand like it was a religious relic. From inside the hood spilled rivers of black hair, an absurd blue mixed in. There was a small intake of air. The stranger was smelling her.
"It really is you. A Mistborn... mine."
All at once, the grip on her wrist changed. It became tight and the emotion was clear even as the cloak obscured body language. The hand of the mysterious man raised her wrist and held her small injury up for Melione's own inspection. His eyes glowed and ethereal, flame-like blue in the flicker of candle light.
"What have they been doing to you?"
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