Then the others came with rage and Zar Zafaran was scorched from the steaming of Haleon’s nostrils. For such a one to meet with such an end that he must strike down the younger ilk once cradled with hopeful love, oh despair! to doll out such merciless judgement. With grief he drove them back, a tower of awful strength. Then in sleep he set a watch at his gates so that he might map his destiny in the dark.

Beautiful was Zar Zafaran, a dream nascent eternal. Now ghast with fumes and bare rock like bone, it reeks of resentful hate. His spectral daughters sing, weaving bleak winters in their rattling throats, and Red Orak his son spreads his flaming limbs. Dala, eldest, their sister in scorn as well as flesh, sulks bent and gaunt over the gathering winds, filling the Archeus with purpose while Orak fills their hands with spears.

And Barrus continues to stalk. Lonesome in his angry prowl, he laments the stillness of his days and wishes for his fellows to stir, for the flesh of emanations has proven to him poor fare. Sullen and raw from eons of lamentation, Ulro pulses like the lungs of the freshly dead. Soft, dying, a wheezing throb are the rare disputes, leaving the Archeus alone to muse upon the past and question the virtues of their divergence.

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And so does all of Ulro, though the great souls languish in deserts far divided. With specters grown in agency running wild across the spheres they made from their own blood, their peaceful respite pulses with fear and wanton spite. But they, the great souls, they war now from the grave, having tired of existence and the rift that gapes between them. Let the specters war, for the specter is the soul that birthed it.

Nessus and Zar Zafaran, Rashomon’s halls and the mists of Polysomnus, the wall of Ulro and Odessi’s fathomless deep, all the regions of the hidden realm drift closer to non-entity as the Worm’s mouth gapes. The powers that once fled its reach now lie splayed in shame. For disparate they’ve grown from suffering, and distant are their voices. Their specters rage hopeless, a knell for future lost.

And you, forever spurned, you languish in Briah, a flame in deep snow, sadly guttering in the empty wind. Outside your fondest home you stand to hold the doorways barred, only to return in your final death to seal away the awful scourge. Do you even know the power in your hands? Do you feel the flame that you hold? Amnesia stands guard, desolate futurity awaits. Shed your ballast before closed, the Wheel of Destiny fades.