At first, there was only darkness—dense, saturating, fluid—and the stale scent of rot left to sour in stagnant air. Somewhere in the black, mechanisms stirred: iron ratchets biting, oxidised chains rasping through forgotten pulleys. One by one, rings of cold lumen ignited along the outer wall, each a halo that rolled its pallid glare across the stone. What the light found, it did not bless. It damned to a sorry fate, indeed…

  The chamber was circular and vast, step-tiered and amphitheatrical. On every tier stood ranks of calcified seats fused to the masonry, their high backs warped to an impossible height. Most were occupied. Manacles of living bone laced the wrists and throats of the courtiers—once nobles, priests, scholars—now relics of sovereign disgrace. Some thrashed when the light struck them, rattling their restraints and shrieking prayers so old the words became meaningless in their throats. Others sat motionless, spines bowed, eyes wax-filmed in acceptance. Here and there, a chair gaped empty save for scraps of meat and snapped chain: places where the occupant had been torn apart, gnawed, then discarded in wet loops across the stone. Splinters of rib, a slick of cartilage, discarded raiments—proofs of an appetite that worked slowly, methodically, through this audience.

  Higher still, upon the penultimate circumference, the Lord of Bones himself sagged within a throne grown to his measure and then overtaken by time. His flesh—shrivelled parchment stretched across arthritic struts—clung to the ivory lattice that held him upright. Once, roaring sermons had thundered out of that withered old mask; now, the jaw hung slack, and only the faintest tilt of his head betrayed the strength to register motion in the hall below. With each laboured inhalation, he rasped a wordless cry for attention.

  At the chamber’s centre rose the ruin of older splendour. Marble seraphs—torsos human, limbs a tangle of cephalopod coils—had once encircled a dais of white stone, their sculpted faces tilted heavenward as they poured crystalline water from cupped tentacles. Now, cracked conduits dribbled only thin rivulets that pattered into silvered puddles before vanishing into sluice grates choked with scale. The angels’ arms lay shattered, tentacles sheared; one head, cleaved at the jaw, leaned against its own plinth in mute despair.

  Where that dais had stood, a far greater seat had been raised—welded from slabs of void-black alloy and braced by piston limbs sunk deep into the floor. Its mass crushed the marble beneath, spider-webbing the stone in radial fractures.

  And upon that throne sat the Pilgrim.

  He dwarfed the seat yet seemed grown from it: skyscraper pauldrons curved like eclipsing moons; vambraces etched with star-map filigree; breastplate embossed in archaic sigils that caught the lumen and flared argent. Servo-strut braces hugged each limb, ribbed with hydraulic muscle too thick for mortal sinew, mating his armour to an exoskeletal scaffold anchored in the throne’s spine. Every breath he drew shivered through silver pistons, venting vapour that misted the air before vanishing. His helmet—smooth, visor-sealed, tapering to a war ready point—offered no eyes, only the suggestion of intent lurking behind mirrored sheen.

  Prehistoric stories had painted heroes in bronze, titans in polished basalt, and angels in sculpted light. This figure gathered all three myths and hammered them into living fact—then bound that fact with machine law older than the Basilica itself. On his left gauntlet a great cannon lay dormant; on his right, a tethered censer ticked and rotated, shedding motes that winked out before they touched the floor. Leaning against his seat, that mythical moonlight glaive rested in dark slumber.

  He did not stir at the rattle of distant doors, nor at the echo of approaching footsteps. Yet something in the chamber shifted—columns flexing, chains tightening—as though every stone recognised the weight of guests crossing its threshold. Creak by creak, the tiered seats inclined toward the centre, their captives groaning in terror or reverence. The fountain’s fractured angels wept faster, thin streams hissing across broken lips. Above, the lumen rings dimmed as if bowing to a sovereign night.

  The Pilgrim remained motionless, colossal hands resting on the throne’s arms, head tilted a fraction downward—listening, perhaps.

  A single lumen ring—brighter than all the rest—slid inward, casting a tight white column upon the shattered dais, revealing Bee in stark isolation. Midnight silk draped from her shoulders to the fractured stone, broken only by slivers of gold thread that caught each tremor of the air and marked the garb as Bhaeryn black.

  Where the hem parted, dark bioceramic plates shielded her shins and knees; one living arm flexed, sinew taut beneath the cloth, while its engineered twin rested at her side—composite bones quietly humming, articulated fingers half-curled. Opalescent wings hung slack behind her back, membranes dull in the unnatural chill, but their pinions twitched at the rush of stagnant air that sighed between shattered pillars.

  Dark hair framed her face in loose, uneven curls; the damp ends clung to the nape of her neck. Her eyes, obsidian and steady, measured the titan on the throne. Her retinue fanned behind her, respectful and uncertain.

  The company formed a crescent. The Wire-Witch stood foremost—ivory skull canted, silverline braids grazing collarbone, posture radiating proprietary calm. Dame Vashante Tens flanked Bee’s left shoulder, every servo poised, sword hilt met by a gauntlet ready to draw. Jhedothar occupied the opposite wing, ruby spear planted, bestial visage unreadable beneath the hollow glow. Beside him, the Hand of Zolgamere held impeccable stillness, cloak pooling like a funeral shroud around pale greaves. The Catabolite remnants—Sar-ek, Toshtta Yew, Cartaxa—ticked in mechanical unison. Lady Isbet Hash closed the arc, gown of azure sweeping as she settled, twin honour guards mirroring her disciplined stance, spearheads angled toward the tiles.

  Around them, chained courtiers writhed or sagged, a tide of terror and resignation; the Lord of Bones gave a single, tremulous stir upon his cracked throne, breath rasping across desiccated lips.

  No herald announced them, and no sovereign voice welcomed them. Only the fountains’ ruined sobbing and the clack of cooling servos filled the hush.

  And above all, the Pilgrim loomed—star-metal colossus enthroned atop ruin—motionless, visor cast in shadow as if the entire hall waited upon a breath that had yet to be drawn.

  Bee swallowed; the sound seemed enormous.

  “Pilgrim,” she called, the word falling like a pebble into a lake of silence.

  The titan did not stir.

  She took one measured step forward.

  “Eberekt,” she said. “Speak to me.”

  The helm pivoted scarcely a finger’s breadth—yet the motion rippled like a tectonic lurch through stone and bone alike. Hydraulic braces hissed, venting twin plumes of vapour that coiled across the dais and spilt down the shattered steps. The chained courtiers shrieked as one, metal-bone fetters clattering; fountains stammered, their meagre streams trembling into fitful spray.

  Instinct tugged at the assembled cohort. Isbet Hash’s guards slipped a pace rearward, spears crossing in ward. The Hand of Zolgamere’s cloak lifted as he glided half a step from the centre line. Even Jhedothar’s heavy steps scraped back across the flagstones, spear-butt bracing against the floor while his lips peeled in a low growl.

  Only Vashante moved the other way—sidling to Bee’s flank, knees soft, pauldron brushing the Lady’s shoulder, every actuator primed for the stroke of steel. Bee felt the knight’s presence like a shield of warm iron at her side.

  She lifted her prosthetic hand, palm outward—steady.

  The servos’ whine died in the air. Fear-widened eyes settled upon her gesture; weapons remained poised but unmoved. Somewhere above, the lumen rings steadied, their pallid glow freezing dust motes in a momentary stillness.

  Across the yawning space, the Pilgrim’s visor clad gaze held upon them.

  When he spoke, the air struck them in the chest. Rattled their teeth. Made their hearing dull.

  “I welcome you laity, faithful, at long last,” the Pilgrim said, his voice rattling the chamber, drawing dust from the walls and the ceiling.

  Behind them, the entryway groaned to life. Machinery churned in unseen recesses, and the passage behind them closed—sealing them in the dark.

  The dark. The bioluminescence died. The only light which remained was stark and electric, cast off from the elder God seated before them.

  Bee’s eyes narrowed. She glanced back, then towards the Pilgrim again.

  “I welcome you to our most hallowed stronghold,” the Pilgrim continued. “Whence mighty Acetyn, the Genekeeper, and I once walked side by side, I so welcome you upon our millennia-long crusade.”

  The Pilgrim’s electronic voice, bassy and sonorous, thudded against stone and bone. He rose from his throne with the grinding of his old exoskeleton and sealed armour. Flecks of basalt, dislodged from the crumbling Basilica, fell around him.

  Fell around him as whalefall to the depths.

  Fell around him as the detritus of a millennium’s dead.

  Bee’s cohort trembled another step back. She held firm. Vashante held firm.

  As the Pilgrim spoke, he advanced, a titan in motion upon them.

  “... Long ago, we fell from the branches of the City of Axiamat, who dared to reach towards the stars. Before the death of our host city, together, we came upon our birthright, a crucible where we could meet our ancestors…”

  Ponderous, the ancient master extended a gauntlet out towards the defiant young Lady. Bee raised her chin, listening with guarded curiosity. Her eyes flinched shut as an emerald laser sparked from the helmet of the Pilgrim and scanned across her face.

  “... And so an alliance was born, out of a dream. A dream to restore our bodies to a beautiful state. Together, mighty Acetyn, the Genekeeper, and I led an army to scour this world...”

  With slow grace, the Pilgrim reached out to close his unbreakable grip around Bee.

  Vashante Tens pushed her way between Bee and the saturnine titan. The gauntlet met hers with the gentlest of motions. And yet Vashante’s knees locked. Every servo in her armature screamed against the unyielding strength pressing into her. She braced both feet, one forward, spine bowed, gauntlets locked at full extension—but it was like standing against the encroachment of a glacier.

  The Pilgrim did not grunt. Did not strain. The enormous hand remained outstretched, open-palmed, not curled into threat. He merely reached, as one might toward a votive flame.

  The chamber fell silent, his ancient words interrupted by this impudent soul. Only Vashante stood between that reach and the Lady he would consume.

  For a moment, their gazes met across the impossible gulf between their helms. Her teeth grinding, lips drawn back in a snarl of mortal defiance. The Pilgrim’s featureless mask betrayed nothing. But from the low creak of his arm servos, Bee felt the air shift—felt, for the first time, the slow beginning of his intent.

  A beat.

  And then the Pilgrim spoke in the same bass-toned calm that had once serenaded an execution:

  “I remade you not to play at fool’s valour. Not to strut or stumble. You were reforged to be fit. For a purpose.”

  Vashante groaned, one leg sliding backwards as the pressure doubled. Her pauldron cracked with a high metallic screech; the composite joint of her elbow juddered dangerously.

  But she held. Even as sparks burst from her shoulder hinge. Even as the Pilgrim’s voice whispered like a benediction at the edge of doom.

  He did not raise his voice. He did not strike. He only dismissed.

  A minute twist of his wrist—graceful, contemptuous—and the Vashante Tens, the forty-fourth Eidolon, was lifted like a plaything.

  Her body snapped backward mid?air, trailing sparks and torn cloth. She struck the stairs to the dais with a crash that rang through the chamber, her momentum snapping stone and throwing fractured tiles into the air. A jagged groove carved her landing point as she skidded, then tumbled, and finally slumped against the base of a ruined column.

  Around Bee, the cohort reacted as one: Isbet Hash took a half-step before halting; her guards stepped instinctively forward and froze. Jhedothar’s teeth bared, spear-tip twitching. The Wire-Witch did not flinch, but her silverline braids lifted with the charge, and one hand flexed. The Hand of Zolgamere tilted his head a fraction. The Catabolites did not move at all.

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  Silence collapsed around the chamber.

  Dust motes drifted. The fountains hissed their soft, broken sobs.

  Bee could not breathe.

  Vashante did not rise.

  Bee flinched, eyes wide and gleaming with disbelief. “Vash—”

  She took a step toward the crash site before catching herself. Her mouth worked wordlessly; one hand clenched into a trembling fist. When she looked back at the Pilgrim, her gaze was no longer only afraid. It burned. Protective. Fury tempered to steel behind her dark eyes.

  The Pilgrim’s hand lowered, once more open, relaxed—half an invitation, half an altar.

  “... We raised the greatest army that had ever walked under this star. The cities fell before us, one by one. The planet was ours to rule. From that position, we recovered the lost genes of humanity, lost in the discord of our corrupted world, one body at a time...”

  He spoke, not cruelly, and stepped once more toward Bee.

  The Witch’s silverline braids lifted in the static tremor. Her skull turned slightly—just slightly—toward the fallen knight, then back to the Pilgrim. No words passed her chrome teeth. But one hand curled inward, nails drumming once against her palm.

  “…But we were each of us betrayed—”

  The Pilgrim’s voice had not yet settled into silence when Jhedothar moved.

  With a snarl, the centuarian warrior lunged. The ruby spear flashed—an arc of crimson brilliance that carved through the chamber’s dark with comet-shine brilliance. Its edge caught the dying light of the throne and multiplied it, flaring in violent radiance.

  The Pilgrim did not flinch. At first. He stood as though willing to accept the blow, to let it strike and glance off, as so many others must have in ages past.

  But it did not.

  The blade of the ruby spear struck true—and bit deep.

  Armour shrieked. A hiss like a brand plunged into wet iron echoed up the Basilica walls. The spear’s edge burned into star metal, carving a molten groove into the layered breastplate. Sigils distorted, light-bled and sparking. Smoke unfurled from the wound in ribbons.

  And the Pilgrim stepped back.

  It was a single movement, massive and involuntary, accompanied by a low, resonant exhale that rolled the air like thunder. Not pain. Not surprise. Recognition.

  Jhedothar gave him no mercy. With a spin that blurred flesh and steel, he turned the haft and struck again—once, twice, a third time—each blow aimed with wrath. The spear gleamed brighter with every strike, incandescent with purpose. Each impact clanged or cracked, ringing off the armour’s breadth, biting into the plate with punishing recoil.

  The Pilgrim’s long arm shot forward—open palm curled into a warding hook—and caught the spear’s haft between two knuckled vambraces. Metal screamed. The air shuddered. For a heartbeat, they remained locked—brute mass versus honed fury.

  Then the titan moved. With a twist of shoulders and a hiss of pistons, the Pilgrim knocked the spear wide, sending Jhedothar sliding backwards across the floor in a shower of fractured tile. He recovered mid-drift, footfalls carving fresh purchase as he spun the haft once more, already closing again.

  Bee’s eyes swept the chamber.

  Searching.

  The Wire-Witch was gone.

  The thought came with a jolt, her gaze catching on the receding flash of pale braids and amethystine skin. The Wire-Witch had broken from the crescent as she ran—not toward the throne, not toward the Pilgrim, but toward one of the chained figures on the chamber’s upper tier. The skeletal, rasping shape. Bee followed the motion upward with her eyes, brow furrowed, only to realise with a twist of unease—

  He still lived. That thing. That mask. The husk of him.

  Who?

  While Bee stared, heart kicking against her ribs, the Wire-Witch reached the rise and dropped to one knee beside him, her fingers already working at the grown manacles clamped tight to wrist and throat.

  Below, the living reeled into motion.

  Lady Isbet Hash stepped back without a word, her azure skirts flaring like a faltering banner. Her honour guard moved instinctively, flanking her with a grace so ingrained it resembled fear. Spears angled toward the Pilgrim, though they dared not strike.

  But the Catabolites had no such hesitation.

  They lunged forward in perfect sync: Sar-ek, Toshtta Yew, and Cartaxa—dead frames reborn through crawling cables and daemon code. Their limbs pistoned with terrible acceleration, claws outstretched, faces dead of all expression but coded wrath.

  They moved not in vengeance but in answer.

  Jhedothar met them in stride.

  The centaurian knight whirled again, spear alight with purpose. The ruby blade carved arcs that split the air with molten shears. Once more he closed on the titan, snarl on his breath, his body a storm of raw precision.

  But this time, the Pilgrim was ready.

  He met Jhedothar’s first strike with a twist of his gauntlet, parrying the haft—unarmed—with a flick that sent red sparks dancing. Another blow came. He caught it mid-lunge, star-metal fingers snapping shut on the staff just short of its head. The blade hissed inches from his helm. He released, yielded a single step backwards, and deflected the third strike in a shower of deflected energy that burned a trench into the tiles.

  Jhedothar pressed relentlessly.

  But now, each thrust, each flawless strike of the ruby spear, was met with perfect economy. The Pilgrim moved without wasted force, his gauntlets striking the shaft in precise angles, turning the attacks aside as if swatting the limbs of a lesser beast. For all Jhedothar’s fury, it was clear—he did not dominate this field.

  The clatter of augmented limbs rose behind Jhedothar—a harmony of servo churn and deadened resolve.

  The Catabolites, slower than the would-be Lord, had reached the fight.

  Sar-ek and Toshtta Yew—rebuilt into one fused frame of clawed limbs and writhing conduit—lunged low, jagged talons sweeping for the Pilgrim’s knees. Cartaxa, wrought broad and heavy like a siege engine, barrelled from the flank with piston legs thundering against the tiles.

  Together, they struck—not in tandem, but in savage convergence. A blur of teeth, steel, and repurposed neural lace.

  The Pilgrim caught them mid-motion.

  One gauntlet clamped down upon Sar-ek and Toshtta Yew’s converged form—his fingers closing around the torso and spine like a smith handling cooled slag. The other caught Cartaxa mid-lunge by the throat, halting him with the ease of that same smith taking up his hammer.

  “More iron toys,” the Pilgrim boomed.

  He crushed Sar-ek and Toshtta Yew.

  “More senseless games.”

  Metal shrieked as bone and synth-frame twisted in his grip. The twin limbs convulsed; sparks burst from their spines. The remains hit the floor in a twitching ruin.

  A second death.

  Cartaxa’s corpse had no time to scream if a Catabolite creation was even capable of fear.

  The Pilgrim pivoted with brutal grace and used him as a bludgeon. One impossible swing.

  The body struck Jhedothar like just such a hammer.

  The knight was flung back, crashing into the broken dais with a thunderous crack. Stone sundered beneath the impact. His breastplate buckled, one of the augments in his flank snapped with a sharp pop, and blood—not ichor, not oil—spilt from between cracked teeth as he sagged to a knee.

  The remains of Cartaxa hit the stone beside him, flaring hot and sparking once before going still.

  The Pilgrim stood alone amidst ruin—steam hissing from his joints, fragments of shattered warriors crumbling from his hands. Where Jhedothar’s spear had found its mark, the titan’s chest plate still glowed with dull orange heat—sigils distorted, edges blackened where the ruby fire had carved its brief truth into the metal. Faint curls of smoke hissed from the wound, venting through hairline fractures in the ancient alloy. But the damage did not slow him. He stood whole, gleaming in ruin.

  He looked down upon Bee.

  She had scrambled from the shockwave’s fringe, dust trailing from her skirts, knees scraped raw beneath plated ridges. Her breath came short and fast, fingers slick with powdered stone. At her side, Vashante groaned—a low, mechanical rasp—half-curled in a brace of broken masonry.

  “Easy,” Bee murmured, voice shaking as she pulled the knight’s weight into her arms.

  Vashante’s electronic eyes adjusted behind their lenses, faceplates cracked. She blinked, disoriented. One hand grasped at Bee’s shoulder, the other half-dangling as actuators whined, struggling to reset. Her voice was a rasp of static and spit.

  “You must get back, My Lady.”

  But she did not. Together, they rose in staggered motion. Bee’s back bowed under the weight, but she did not let go. The great shadow of the Pilgrim loomed above, silent.

  Watching.

  Bee stagger-propped her knight against a fractured plinth, Vashante’s weight an iron burden across her shoulders. Dust swirled, stinging throats and eyes, but she lifted her chin toward the steel horizon of the Pilgrim’s breastplate and forced her voice to carry.

  “Eberekt.”

  The name rang brittle in the throne room—too small for the hall, too real for the mythical figure. Yet she brandished it like a beacon.

  “You’re still like me,” she said, breath hitching. “Under all that star metal… you’re human.”

  The visor did not so much as twitch. Only the slow vent pulse at his collar betrayed life within.

  “We don’t have to keep killing,” Bee pressed on, fingers slipping on Vashante’s dented cuirass as she reasserted her grip. “You want my body? My genes? Fine—take them. Wear my fucking face!” She screamed. “But tearing me apart won’t save anyone.”

  Around the tiers, manacled nobles stilled; fractured fountains dribbled in uneasy counter-tempo. Jhedothar, coughing blood, dragged himself upright, ruby spear across his knees. Hash’s guards froze mid-regroup; even the Hand of Zolgomere, so easily forgotten, paused, lenses fixed upon the Lady’s upturned face.

  “You’re lying,” Bee said, louder now, voice cracking into echo. “Lying like Acetyn did. Like the Immortal does. Those myths you spin—they’re not real.”

  Still, the titan watched.

  “I know the truth,” she shouted. “The day-star is dying. It’ll swallow this world, every City, every freak. These pointless wars won’t matter!”

  Gasps flickered through the chained gallery—an intake of terror from lungs long debased to hope or prophecy. Isbet Hash’s faceted eyes widened; Jhedothar’s grip tightened; even broken Vashante’s head lifted a fraction, cybernetic drivers buzzing.

  Bee’s next words broke a deep silence in which even the fountains seemed to hold their breath.

  “Help us, Eberekt. Or wallow in the dark until everything you ever fought for turns to ash.”

  That silence answered—dense, strangling. The Pilgrim stood amid the ruin he had made, armour still searing orange at the wound Jhedothar carved, censer ticking softly in the dark. No tremor disturbed his stance; no light flickered behind the visor. He was an immovable monolith weighing judgement.

  Seconds stretched—one, two, a dozen—until the chamber’s only sound became the brittle hiss of cooling steel and Bee’s own thundering pulse as she waited for a titan’s reply that did not come.

  A flash of light from hidden recesses in the shattered fountainworks. The song of data carried upon the still air.

  She appeared.

  The Immortal.

  The fountain spray refracted the projection into wavering prisms: one instant, the Immortal towered like a cathedral spire, her antique uniform pristine amidst the collapsed ruin; the next, she was fractured into argent shards, each ripple of water shredding her outline into strobing ribbons of light.

  Long silver curls drifted about her shoulders as though buoyed by some private gravity; the dark planes of her face caught stray gleams, turning every blink into a starburst. Her smile gleamed like it had been chiselled into history itself.

  “Well said!” the Immortal declared, her voice rising above the fountain’s wash and a collapse of rubble from their infighting, spoken with delighted clarity. “Truly you are your mother’s daughter!”

  She gave a small, theatrical clap. The sound echoed unnaturally. Applause that was forever caught in crystal.

  The Pilgrim did not turn. Did not kneel. He stood beneath her light like a monument trapped in eclipse—his molten wound cooling to a sullen red beneath the hologram’s argent downpour. The censer that he still held, its embers paled to ash-grey. Beneath the holographic blaze, he looked smaller. Diminished. A war god made mute. The darkness around his armour deepened to a funerary stillness.

  Bee’s hand rose to her brow, shielding her eyes from the brilliance. Her wings twitched under the pressure of heat and awe. When she spoke, her voice was taut as drawn wire.

  “Am I speaking to the real one, this time?” she asked. “Or is this another ghost in the machine?”

  The Immortal gave no real answer. Not yet. Instead, she stooped—vast and graceful, descending in projection until her colossal, half-translucent face hovered over the dais.

  “Let’s have a proper look at you all,” the Immortal said, lips curled again. Her eyes gleamed with mischief, curiosity, and something stranger still. Like reverence twisted backwards into appraisal.

  Bee squinted against the glare, chrome teeth bared in a silent snarl as she drew Vashante a fraction closer. The knight’s optics raised, automatics scrambling to filter the sudden luminescence. On the flanks, Hash’s guards lowered their spear points in unconscious deference; even the Hand of Zolgamere inclined his houndskull helmet, witchfire-shrouded lenses whirring to calibrate the bright image of the spectral queen.

  Shattered Catabolite wreckage smoked at their boots, forgotten beneath that overwhelming light. Even the broken courtiers chained to the seats above lifted their heads, faces awash with haunted dread.

  “Is that how you imagined this would go?” the Immortal then asked, her attention turning back to Lady Bhaeryn—towards her granddaughter, Bee. “You could beseech him and be free of his will to consume you, whole?”

  Bee stared, wordlessly, lips still pulled into that contemptuous sneer.

  “You seek to save these people?” the Immortal continued. “Space is vast. The technology and resources required to traverse it are beyond your comprehension. Stellar engineering, perhaps that is what you dream of? There is not enough energy available on this world to tap into the forces which you seek.”

  Bee’s eyes flicked down, then to Vashante uncertainly. Vashante’s attention was fixed onto that holographic marvel from an age before ages, perhaps not even understanding the gravity of that which the speaker revealed.

  And still, the Immortal continued, with a gentle laugh on her lips, as if the situation was obscene and beneath her addressing.

  “The truth you seek is nothing. History is nothing more than what passes from the lips of each successive generation. The stories take shapes as myriad as the freaks that labour in your dark world. The truth you do not want to recognise is this.”

  Her spectral eyes fixed on Bee, intense now.

  “The age of humanity has ended. I stand as both witness and warden to this demise, a living testament to the futility of resistance against the grand design of oblivion. And there is no more truth to it than that. These histories are irrelevant. Knowledge of this past makes no difference to your future. There is nothing you can do to stop the end that comes. It is better that you all scramble in dark ignorance than suffer in the light. To your kind, such foreknowledge will only bring pain and suffering as you struggle against the inevitable.”

  The Immortal stood tall once more, a shining spire of cosmic horror.

  “So cast aside your desperate hopes. Return to your lonely towers and weeping vaults. Hold this knowledge deep in your hearts, and shelter those who cannot defend themselves from this burning, all-consuming truth.”