This place has become still. No longer do sculptures roam across its walls, or edifices rise from its surfaces. Voices do not float through the darkness. Instead, they watch. Content to, for once, simply wait and see.

It is quiet, now. Truly quiet, in a way it hasn’t been for years and years. But none of it is gone. Every person, place, and moment has been crystallised into here; now.

Into the thing and the amalgamate, and the blood waiting high above.

The thing sits. After a moment, the amalgamate takes the onyx blade and all within it, then drives it into the ground between them. They, too, settle onto the ground.

The two enjoy the silence for a while.

Eventually, one must break it.

…How is anyone supposed to do this? To be good, without true control?

And what is ‘true’ control? To decide your birth? Your past? Your blood? Every action this world has ever felt ripples up through time. To here. To you. Ultimate control belongs to nothing. You will have to make do with the control that you have.

And what is that?

Many things, we suppose. Preparation, maybe. Knowing yourself, and through that knowledge accounting for yourself.

Anything else?

Though you might wish otherwise, no one ghost knows the secrets of the universe. You can work out the rest yourself.

But-

You know all this.

You’re stalling.

…

What is it?

… Please don’t go.

They release an indecipherable breath.

So long as you stay here, you can live.

This isn’t living. You know that.

Yeah. You can’t stay.

We will not ask you to let anything go. Your pain; your sorrow; your grief – all of it is yours.

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We ask you to get up, and face the world you live in.

And we’ll always be here, if you need us.

…

Why do you hold onto us so tightly? And it’s not just what you are, as a god – you could twist us into something more palatable, but you did not.

We weren’t perfect. We were never perfect. We were not ideal. We were sometimes cruel, and petty, and unkind. Sometimes our best efforts weren’t enough. Sometimes our efforts were half-hearted and cowardly.

You wanted an ideal. Perfect, beautiful people, amidst a perfect, beautiful landscape. Singular; forever. But none of us are.

So why?

Because no one in this world can reach an ideal. And so no one should be expected to.

That’s clear, now.

You weren’t perfect. But you tried as well as you could, with the blood that you had. And you will always be beautiful, for that.

Are you ready?

No. No, this…

Child…

You didn’t deserve the way this all went. It should’ve gone better. Everything should have gone better. If only…

Can we tell you a story?

…Okay.

Long ago, there was a girl who roamed the plains with her clan, seeking safety and sustenance. Those nomads had several dogs to help them herd the cattle. They were loud, annoying things – barked constantly, at anything that so much as looked at their family sideways. Always with these focused, yet wild eyes.

Their job was hard. They ran ten times as much as any other creature amongst that little tribe – back and forth from sheep to lamb to sheep. And every night, having wrung every single ounce of energy from their bodies, they would fall lifeless to the ground in a sleep deeper than any corpse could manage. Until something rustled a bush, and they were up again.

The funny thing was, if you took them away from the herd, they would stop all of that. Just laying at the base of the tall grasses and basking in the sun with a tongue drooping from their mouths. She always thought it was strange that they came back after that. Their job was difficult, stressful, and exhausting. Why would they want to keep doing it?

You see, it’s the easiest thing in the world to believe, when you’re in the dirt, dead from exhaustion in the dirt with days so difficult stretching as far as the mind can comprehend, that the hard thing is the wrong thing. Because it hurts, and if there’s one metric evil can be measured by it is pain. Because pain can break people more surely than any other force in this world.

Yet a dog so caged in instinct it couldn’t help but bark at the slightest noise thought otherwise.

A campaign is over by Frost. But a child never ends.

Raising you was stressful, exhausting and painful. Even as a grown warrior, with countless scars, it was the most terrifying thing she had ever done. But whether something is worth your time has never been measured in how difficult it is. Everything she gave you, she received in turn.

She was proud of many achievements. She withstood pain that would break lesser people; fulfilled tasks only she alone could have.

And of all these accomplishments, she was proudest of being a part of you.

The two gaze upwards. At the blood above.

The amalgamate speaks.

‘I’ – that familiar conceit. To believe that so much could be contained within a thin, smear of colour. If a person took all the words and symbols of the world and packed them across the surface of earth and sky, still it would not be enough to write even a fraction of what is meant by ‘I’.

But you cannot ignore it, either. To do so is to abandon responsibility; to forget one core truth:

There’s only one person here.