I write this memoir for those who are yet to fall. 

The draught that assaults my cell freezes my fingers and toes, making it difficult to hold my pen. The parchment is trapped beneath half-empty bowls of my unfinished meals, thankfully their scent is muted by the early winter cold. Forgive the smudges of ink, dear reader. I blame my emotions equally with the cold for any error shaking hands may cause this manuscript. I was once so precise in movement, dancing with partner or blade in hand. Now, I struggle to raise myself from the cot each dawn. The weight that keeps me shackled is more mental than physical nowadays.  

I hope this account may guide those with greater character than I to find tranquillity and wisdom. The demons who hold me captive know I no longer possess such traits myself. Perhaps that is why my ink never seems to run dry. They enable my final self-inflicted torture; confronting who I have become.

See dear reader, I was not felled by a divine mandate, nor the animosity of the people I ruled into ruin. Even if both the Mysteries and the Courts proclaim it was so. No, I fell as any man fuelled by ambitions of greatness may. I fell to love. 

It is one of life’s great hypocrisies that good intentions can create great suffering. Actualising justice, manifesting a world better than what we see as common, takes vision and strength I did not possess. It takes a willingness to not merely sacrifice others but ourselves to practical ideals. It requires the ability to compromise despite our egos, because best is too grave an enemy of better. I was and still am not that person. 

I will try not to make excuses for my conduct. What has happened is. But hear me, dear reader, I will offer my most biased of reasoning as is my right as author. For this is my final defence. May it be admitted to the surviving records of those corrupt trials held in my absence after the sack of my capital. This most selfish of manuscripts to join the decrepit halls of broken glass and burnt tomes in the gutted Dannbourne archives would be a fitting end for it.

I do not know if my experiences will aid those who will come long after my corpse rots and my grave desecrated. I no longer hold hope that my kin will come, singing the oaths of our ancestors, to send me down the river Selene to meet the Endless Night with dignity. Let them thrive elsewhere. 

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Those who survived my consequences would most likely burn all traces of this account if it was within their power. It would be a final defiance of my meagre attempts to rewrite a history already well recorded. Those histories I have been able to acquire and read in captivity have given me reprieves of laughter and tears in equal measure. How they can write with such fear and awe of dear Mocif gives me hope that his memory may outlive my own. Too many have been forgotten in the wake of my infamy.

I am no paragon. There is no need for Duskin philosophers to dissect my work. They were far from the clearcut machinations of a malicious despot. In truth, I am merely another madman with visions of grandeur enabled by the privileges of my birth. A common finding among history’s villains. 

But, I remain hopeful others shall find my personal follies to be an apt set of fables that guide some to be better. Or at least not worse. Mayhap this memoir foster a pause, the briefest of hesitations, in those yet to commit themselves to the well-worn path of selfishness I walked during my darkest days. 

It has been seventeen years since that final routing of my Daywalkers at the hands of the Nightstalkers’ Court. The betrayal of the Lightlurkers and Shadowhawks may be recorded as the final nail in the coffin of my tyranny but know that that was not when I first courted my people’s demise. The wounds I inflicted upon us prior to that horrific campaign were mortal well before we faced the enemy that solemn day.

So read diligently, dear reader, as I write in a vain pursuit of catharsis. I seek to understand if I was ever going to leave more than destruction in my wake. To put to bed any question that I could ever become the man my people, my friends, my family deserved. 

Be strong in judgment, dear reader, for my own is tainted by the guilt of a younger man that once knew better. A man that once felt the proper weight of leadership, of the lives I snuffed out to fuel my own legend.

Indulge me, dear reader, for I have earned my reputation. Let me reveal how I, Cyrus Du Pont, the Mysteries’ Dawnbreaker, Last King of Dannbourne, and the Court-born Butcher condemned the greatest tripartite alliance of man to its vicious demise.