Once, a hero rose to save the world. He failed. For a thousand years since, the world has been a wasteland of ash and mist, ruled by the immortal emperor known as the Lord Ruler. Every revolt has failed miserably. Somehow, hope survives. Hope that dares to dream of ending the empire and defeating the Lord Ruler. A new kind of uprising is being planned—one that depends on the cunning of a brilliant criminal mastermind and the determination of an unlikely heroine: a teenage street urchin named Vin. Once, a hero rose to save the world and failed. This time, can a young heroine succeed? : For a thousand years, the ash has fallen and no flowers have bloomed. For a thousand years, the Skaa have slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years, the Lord Ruler has reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror. Until Kelsier, a brilliant, half-Skaa thief and natural leader, finds in himself the powers of a Mistborn, and turns his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark. The impossible task has been accomplished. The Lord Ruler has been vanquished. But with Kelsier dead, too, the awesome task of building a new world has been left to former street urchin and Kelsier's protégé, Vin, who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the land. Vin is now worshipped as a hero in her own right, but she is haunted by a strange, vaporous entity hidden in the mists. Having escaped death only by becoming a Mistborn himself, Emperor Elend Venture now hopes to find clues left behind by the Lord Ruler that will allow him to save the world. But with the return of lethal mists, increasingly heavy ashfalls, and ever more powerful earthquakes, Elend and Vin aren't sure that killing the Lord Ruler to end the Final Empire was the right thing to do after all. The Cosmere The Stormlight Archive Words of Radiance Edgedancer (Novella) Dawnshard (Novella) Mistborn: The Original Trilogy The Well of Ascension The Hero of Ages Mistborn: The Wax and Wayne series Shadows of Self Bands of Mourning The Lost Metal Collection Other Cosmere novels Warbreaker Tress and the Emerald Sea (forthcoming) Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (forthcoming) The Sunlit Man (forthcoming) The Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series The Scrivener's Bones The Knights of Crystallia The Shattered Lens The Dark Talent Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians (co-authored with Janci Patterson) The Rithmatist series Other novels The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England (forthcoming) Other books by Brandon Sanderson The Reckoners Firefight Calamity