Feruchemical Youth and the Heightenings

[Trusk'our Silent Gatherer]

If a person were to tap youth from an Atiummind and then relieve the 5th Heightening, would they stay younger, or would they revert to their original age after releasing their Atiummind but still cease to age?

If a person with the 5th Heightening were to store youth, would they still look and function as their normal age?

[Returned Bloodsealer]

 

Since the function of the 5th Heightening is that it stops your aging, and your soul knows how old it is, I would wager that the person would revert to their true age before the aging stopped. But we don't really know how any of the Metallic Arts interact with Heightenings, so I don't think we can say for sure.

An interesting, converse example is what would happen if someone with enough Breaths to reach the 5th Heightening (and is a Feruchemist) tried to store youth in an atiummind. Would they age and then stay at the age the reached through Feruchemy when they stopped storing youth? Could they be a limitless source of youth for storage? Would their stored youth be some kind of "super" youth? Would it work at all? Who knows? I think that this would be a fun question for Brandon.

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Brandon Sanderson

The Lord Ruler died because he had filled his bracers with a large amount of youthfulness, and had to keep drawing it out to stay young--as his soul knew how hold it was, and his body kept trying to 'bounce back' to its perceived age. Compounding is how he gained enough extra youthfulness to pull this off.

Phantine

Actually, I have a question about the 'bouncing-back'.

Is the 'bounce back force' actually what's stored in a metalmind?

For instance, when storing atium a feruchemist ruins his body to make himself old, and then his metalmind 'catches' the force the soul puts out as it tries to restore his true, younger age?

So you create metalminds by seesawing a ruining and a preserving impulse together.

Brandon Sanderson

The bounce back is caused by the relationship between the three realms of the cosmere. What you're saying isn't terribly far off, but at the same time, ignores some underpinning fundamentals of how it all works.

In the cosmere, your soul is basically an idealized version of yourself--and is a constant force pushing your body to match it. Your perceptions are the filter through which this happens, however, and many of the magics can facilitate in interesting ways.

General Reddit 2016 (Jan. 2, 2016)