Morik Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 Ok, so in this thread: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/3098-physicalspiritual-aspects-of-preservationruin/ There is some interesting discussion. This explanation by Nameless One sounds reasonable to me: Preservation forcibly separated Ruin's cognitive aspect from his physical/spiritual ones. Ruin's physical aspect (the black mist) was confined to the area around the Well of Ascension. Meanwhile, Ruin's spiritual aspect was leaking into the physical realm as atium. This decreased his overall power level, until he could somehow return it to his spiritual aspect. But, my question is this: what actually happened to the power contained in the Atium when Elend & co burned it? We know it wasn't destroyed (conservation of power law, I don't have a reference, but have read that Brandon confirmed it). We know it doesn't go away from Ruin permanently--otherwise people burning Atium over the course of 1000 years would have weakened Ruin over time. So where does it go? Does burning it disperse the power, but not put it immediately back into the spiritual realm as part of Ruin? (It will eventually leak back through at the Pits, but if it went back to the spiritual realm immediately as part of Ruin, then he would have won, right? He'd have his edge back...) So maybe it disperses the power somewhere in the spiritual realm, and then that power is slowly re-collected as part of Ruin, and then would again slowly leak out via the Pits? (Talking about what happens normally, over the course of the millenium of the final empire.)
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