So I finished Mistborn a couple weeks ago and just now finished reading through this thread. I have a question that I don't think has been asked before. It's related to the ending. I'll try to explain concisely:
1. Ati and Leras are presumably "alive." That is, they had bodies, took the power, and their bodies went poof, like Vin. Or they always had the power, but that seems unlikely to me (not the point of this question, though).
2. Dead people hanging around in the middle world (who haven't entered the Beyond yet) can use the powers...right? Kelsier was able to talk to Spook, and if I remember right it has been said that he did so using Preservation's power. If this isn't true the whole thing falls apart.
3. So. When Vin kills Ruin, shouldn't he be able to take his power back? Clearly not. Doesn't that, then, mean that his consciousness is in some greater way destroyed? (Also that the same happened to Leras when Ruin finally smothered him.) Wouldn't that mean that Vin's was as well, and she can't be around in the afterlife? Or did the bit...oddly enough...of
Ruin in her (humans have both) protect her somehow? Or something.
...This question/theory has more holes in it than I thought before I started writing it down. Still, thoughts?
Regarding the ending itself...Vin was AWESOME and I would have liked to see her live, but I'm not like totally enraged by the ending the way it is. Sazed makes
sense as God, and of course that was foreshadowed from the very beginning...not that I figured it out...