Does Your Bio-Chromatic Breath Leak As You Age?

[Trusk'our he/him]

I read this quote and it got me thinking.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Lightsong Feeds on the Child

Why a child? It doesn't much matter, truthfully. An adult, or even someone elderly, could provide a Breath that would keep a god alive.

But the Breaths of those who are aged aren't as vigorous as those of those who are young. If Lightsong were given one of those to feed on, he'd survive for another week—but he wouldn't feel as vibrant or alive as he does after feeding on the child's Breath.

The people of Hallandren are faithful. Even if Lightsong himself doesn't believe, they do, and they want to provide the best for him. Hence they use children. Old enough to know what they are doing, yet young enough to give a powerful, vibrant Breath to their god.

So if the elderly have weaker Breaths, does that mean that your Breaths leak away as you age, contributing to your body breaking down? Could it perhaps be that aging in the Cosmere is a combination of you Connection to your birth time, but also that your innate Investiture leaks away?

[Honorless he/him]

Or the leaking is another effect of aging, rather than the cause. (The cause seems to be that mortality is baked into the Spiritweb, as Brandon has confirmed that your soul knows it should age and the various forms of immortality, or agelessness if you want to be exact, involves a form of tricking the Spiritweb, and if that method is... interrupted, you typically don't just become mortal again, it seems, you experience all the aging you should've gone through).

[Trusk'our he/him]

8 hours ago, Honorless said:

Or the leaking is another effect of aging, rather than the cause. (The cause seems to be that mortality is baked into the Spiritweb, as Brandon has confirmed that your soul knows it should age and the various forms of immortality, or agelessness if you want to be exact, involves a form of tricking the Spiritweb, and if that method is... interrupted, you typically don't just become mortal again, it seems, you experience all the aging you should've gone through).

That makes a lot of sense.

I think that if you have a lot of Breaths you can sense another person's illness via their Bio-Chromatic aura now that I recall, which would support your theory.

[Weltall]

I actually asked Brandon this at my first signing and while I didn't think to record his exact words, he said that Breaths don't noticeably 'leak' once you accumulate enough. There's still probably some degradation in the same way that an individual Breath gets less vibrant, but not to the point that it measurably impacts the aggregate strength.