"The Eleventh Metal" is a short Mistborn story by Brandon Sanderson, first published in 2011. It is set before the events of "The Final Empire", roughly three months after Kelsier's escape from the Pits of Hathsin, and it catches him at his least assured: newly Snapped, grieving his wife Mare, and nowhere near the confident crew leader readers meet in the novels.
The story follows Kelsier's training under Gemmel, an eccentric and mentally unstable older Mistborn who drills him in Allomancy and in the burning of metals. It is a deliberately instructional piece as well as a dramatic one, showing the magic system in motion while tracing the point at which Kelsier's grief begins to harden into the plan for vengeance that drives the rest of the saga.
Sanderson wrote the story for the Mistborn Adventure Game, the tabletop roleplaying game from Crafty Games, as a way of introducing game masters and players to the setting and its magic. It was originally available with the game, and the complete story was later collected in "Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection", where it remains the most widely read edition.
