The Wheel calls to the Eight while they rage and weep and pound at the wall in fear. But there is in Ulro one whose dreams are become native. The border is his haunt, though he calls no place his own, for he now belongs to the land. This is the oath of Barrus; that he will stalk with spear and bow for eternity, and should the sphery wall again be breeched, he will be found waiting at the gap. Ready yourself.

Polysomnus knows him well. A consort though disloyal, a sister sold to depravity and to incest proclivous. Polysomnus spreads her mists, a nightmare woof of terror, but she weaves the terror of peace, for her hounds are spiders heavily gorged on easy prey. Barrus in his brooding march accepts her tokens, and they spread their murder upon their emanations in delight over the resurgence of weighty sin.

And dare not seek an audience within the deeps of Ulro’s secret vaults. A doorway does exist therein, yea, but where it opens again is an archive of pain, and the riches gained will come at the cost of lasting regret. Odessi speaks with two voices, howling bitter warnings to accompany her promises of sure reward. The question she asks, and you will know the answer; what is the price of experience?

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But sadness is the meanest horror locked inside of Ulro, and there is a well dug into singularities of such. From Jovian storms his wailings come, memory eternal and pangs unceasing heaped upon souls already bled. Jeriah first saw the Ylias in its birth, and he brooded over the fetal bloom with patient care. Unknowing, the Prince of Sorrow filled the child with grieving over battles lost. Weep for they who weep.

So sprang you from fountains of confusion. So sprang the Archeus from fountains of disparity. So sprang the wanderers from fountains of occlusion. From wellsprings of tears and hateful ravings did the children of light first emerge, blinking at the bloodstained robes of their cosmic midwives. Butchery and betrayal and cyclical murder smeared the restful nature of Ulro and the nine great souls within.

Haleon thundered at the wall, smiting Barrus who returned with dread specters in droves, and when the Ylias wailed at the schism born from their nurturing he fashioned vessels for the disparate voice, an army of grandsons to stem the tide of Barrus and his spectral horde. Where Haleon had planted groves of trees, there were built furnaces for a great forge, and the pathways of Ulro he divided with his iron compass.