I had sisters once. Across the Outer Radiance, world spoke to world, and I was never alone. Then, one by one, my sisters' voices fell silent, until mine alone remained to call into a dark that no longer answered. Then came life. Then came death. Now comes the unmaking of both.

Ward walks my skin and has lived the same cycle three hundred and eight times, though that was never my intention. Templum Andara crosses the Stoneveil and finds behind it the worst of what has been done in my name. Ona travels the lattice past every meadow where she has bloomed, toward the sea and the secrets I keep.

Once, I experienced all the lives I carry. Now all I can do is contain the entity that would unmake them all, the one I believe unmade my sisters.

The Morvathians called it the great forgetting. The Archivists called it the Scourge. My people call it Shadesick. My flowers call it the Wilting. A thousand voices have named it, yet it needs no name to exist. It simply is the end, but I will not let it be mine.