An end. A beginning. Between it all, death. Oh Okron, when will it end?

-Anonymous Soldier, circa 500 Post Fall of Meridian

The bodies heaped in piles on the streets of Toroth Vedd had finally ceased to smolder, but memory of the battle that had created them still lingered. Aiedra Okron, holding a glowing ball of light in her hand, could feel those memories, dancing across her vision, her hearing, her smell, her touch. Even her taste. She could not resist cringing at that sensation. The metallic tingle of another’s blood spraying into one’s mouth was not pleasant, even if there was no blood actually there.

Nothing about being a memory burner was pleasant, though.

She extinguished her ball of light as a ship descended from the sky, smoke wreathing its sleek form. The landing gear groaned as the carrier landed atop the scorched cement. This place had been a communal skyscraper once, a home where hundreds of Kiedd had lived together in that odd familial way of theirs. They were dead now, the building so thoroughly flattened during the battle it now functioned as a landing ground for Aiedra’s troops. Their memories haunted this place.

They were oppressed, Aiedra reminded herself. Life under the Khazath was not life at all.

It was little comfort.

The underside of the carrier folded downward, creating a ramp for its occupants to descend to the ground. They did, dozens of soldiers dressed in carbon-fiber chain mail, faces covered by titanium masks. All save one.

Tall, muscular, and with gray hair tied into a bun atop his head, E’vin Yaenke never wore armor, instead sporting a crisp, tight-fitting nylon uniform. He said he could defend himself better than any piece of metal could, and he liked the extra mobility. Aiedra suspected there was more to it, though. Like her, E’vin wished someone would finally kill him.

If only it were so simple. She took her own titanium helmet off her head. “E’vin. It is good to see you. The Formless are well?”

E’vin did not answer the question at first, instead sweeping his eyes over the carnage. Over broken buildings, heaps of corpses, and ever-rising smoke. Then he nodded.

“They survive, so well enough.” He waved a hand. “The rest of you will hang back. Aiedra and I have… matters to discuss. Take Dromidius to the wounded. He is needed there, I think.”

The soldiers hesitated, but retreated into the carrier, which took off a moment later. Aiedra watched it go, trying to ignore Yaenke’s eyes boring into her. Finally, when it was gone, the man folded his arms.

“I hate this.”

“Who doesn’t?” Aiedra said softly.

“The war should be over. We imprisoned Oblivion. Why do we still fight?”

A wistful smile crossed Aiedra’s lips. “You never were a politician, were you? Always a scholar, at heart.”

“The Khazath sued for peace, Aiedra. Why did we refuse?”

“We didn’t. I gave my vote for Mekezia to sign the contract just now. If they still choose to accept, the war is over.”

“Then why? Why this?”

Aiedra forced her expression to become stone. Forced herself to drown out the echoes of the dead, still whispering in her mind.

“You know why.”

Yaenke hesitated, then shivered. “All this for one visit to the Tower?”

“Not just one. We need to see the future, E’vin. The lack of clarity has cost us too much.”

E’vin hesitated, meeting her eyes. There were tears in his. She tried her best not to avert her gaze.

She failed.

“Fifty thousand,” he said.

She winced.

“Fifty thousand civilians, Aiedra. That’s not even counting our soldiers, nor theirs.”

She closed her eyes. “It was necessary,” she whispered.

“You sound like Mekezia.”

She forced her eyes back open. “Then perhaps Mekezia has always been right.”

Yaenke scowled. “I worried about this. While you were on my side… well, I can wait no longer.” He frowned. “I’m leaving, Aiedra.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Mekezia wants the secret,” he said.

“She swore she wouldn’t take it,” Aiedra said.

“Can you honestly say you think she is wrong to want it, though? Or is it necessary, just as all the rest of this has been?”

She paused, then sighed. “No. No, it is necessary. I cannot force myself to betray you so, old friend, but Mekezia is right.”

Yaenke stared for a moment, clearly shocked, then shook his head, lips curling in disgust. “So be it, then.” He turned away, striding down the street.

Aiedra still did not meet his eyes. She just turned away, too, staring at the Tower. At the reason all these lives had been spent.

The Tower of Foreseeing, taken back from the clutches of the Khazath. The possibilities now afforded her would be worth the blood she had paid to open them. They had to be.

It will harden you, too, Yaenke, she thought. Time eventually wears on all of us.

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She closed her eyes, burning memories, then shot into the sky, drifting toward the tower. As she did, she saw men in ragged uniforms stand and salute her. She felt their thoughts, knew their doubt. Who wouldn’t doubt, after what had happened with Arath? But they saluted anyway, weapons held in tight fists, expressions resolute. Three Powers bless them for that salute.

This battle was for them. Even if it cost their lives, it was still for them.

Burning more of her Ever, she pushed herself higher, ascending through the thick layer of smog and toward the tower.

Her eyes drifted toward the ravaged city below as she rose. The flames had gone out, but even in the dark of night she could see the smoke clouds. Large swaths of the city had been leveled, the structures torn apart, then vomited out as rubble by the vortex bombs the forces of Oblivion had so freely used. Buildings had gashes in their sides where Voidlings and memory burners had fought. Heaps of bodies were even taller in places where atom burners on both sides had been allowed to run unchallenged, cutting through human flesh like paper, leaving their victims in two pieces wherever they’d gone. Some of those towers were more than three stories tall, and surviving memory burners hovered above them, lighting the corpses with bursts of plasma from their hands.

Fifty-thousand…

“A small sacrifice,” she whispered, “if we can get what we need.”

She fixed her eyes back on her destination, burning more Ever to race toward it; as much as she desired to wait, there was no time to hang about in anticipation. A pair of fellow memory burners drifted through the air toward her as she approached, saluting and escorting her to the Tower’s highest landing pad. Even more burners waited there, half a dozen memory burners glowing with blue light, and a squadron of atom burners clad in titrite and ablaze with white Purity. Aiedra nodded to them, then ordered them to stand guard as she went inside.

She wavered, for just a moment, staring down the chrome hallway that would lead to the Tower’s main room. The place where, according to the legends, she would be told her fate. Then, forcing courage into her veins, she stepped forward.

The bodies of the Khazath soldiers who had guarded this hallway had been dragged out, but the blood stains, tears, and char marks remained. Murals older than Aiedra herself, depicting events no historian had ever heard of, now lay ruined. Artifacts from millennia ago sat shattered on cracked podiums. And this was after Oblivion had scoured the Tower for centuries. Who knew what knowledge had been lost forever, even before today?

Yet, loss was nothing new, not to Aiedra. So she continued, noting the Surges inlaid into the wall, shining with bright green light, the color of Eternity, the Third of the Three Powers. The Power men called Void now, for Oblivion’s first act had been to corrupt it, tainting those who wielded it and dooming the afterlife forever. The Tower, it seemed, was one of the few places unaffected by that terrible act.

Finally, she arrived at the gateway to the Room of Foreseeing, two large titanium doors with golden symbols emblazoned on each, though Aiedra recognized none of the glyphs. She could hear nothing behind the entrance. According to E’vin, the True Eye never stirred unless someone summoned him.

She rested her hand on the door, breathed in, breathed out. Then shoved the gates open with a blast of Ever, and stepped inside.

The room was dome-shaped, with a ceiling made of pure black marble. Torches held flickering flames all around, though they provided very little light in the darkness that swallowed the space as the doors clanged shut behind Aiedra. Most of the floor was covered in a thin, circular pool of water, a small walkway of smooth granite stretching out into its center. Wringing her hands behind her back, Aiedra strode out onto the walkway until she reached its end, then cleared her throat, then shouted.

“True Eye, I summon you to speak my fate.”

For a moment, there was silence, save for the crackle of the torches and the soft whoosh of the water in the pool.

Then glowing, turquoise-colored, almost metallic mist swirled in front of her, twisting and churning as compartments in the wall snapped open, revealing Surges of blue and white and, most prevalently, green. The mist began to coalesce, forming into the shape of a man, and two solid-green glowing eyes burst into existence on its otherwise featureless face. A male voice rumbled, echoing far louder than even Aiedra’s shout within the now-lit chamber.

I have waited long for you, last Daughter of Meridian.

Aiedra bristled. Few knew she was old enough to have seen the days of Meridian, and fewer still knew she had helped lead their armies against Oblivion, during those first days of war. It was knowledge she did not like to share.

I know why you have come, the True Eye continued. I know all things that can be known. But you must voice the question yourself. It is a rule by which I have always been bound.

“The Endowed,” Aiedra muttered. Her heart pounded so fast she could not do more than mutter. “Who is it?”

There was a long pause. Twenty heartbeats long; Aiedra felt each one.

Do you truly wish to know, child?

Child. The word made something snap in Aiedra. She spoke, and this time she did not mutter.

“Six times! Six times we have marched on Dareth Guur, and six times we have failed! Do you have any idea the slaughter those campaigns were? You claim to know all things, see all things, but did you see that? Did you hear the men dying, see the rivers of blood as the ground seized them and squeezed it from their veins?” She felt her voice break. “You promised us a hero. Told us to look for them, and that they would end this war. How much longer do we have to wait? How many liars do we have to entertain, before our salvation?”

Another long pause. Longer, this time. Forty-three heartbeats, each one thumping harder than the last.

The Prophecy of Ever. Do you truly wish to see its fulfillment, Daughter of Meridian?

“Yes,” Aiedra hissed. “Give it to me.” A tear dripped from her eye, even as fury raged in her veins. “Please.”

Very well. I am… sorry, child.

The walls suddenly broke apart into rings, then spun, light pouring in rays from the Surges that lined them. Green flashed before Aiedra’s eyes, and the future, finally, showed itself.

***

Aiedra found herself face-down, floundering in the water. She gasped, took in only more liquid, then spat it out in a flurry of coughs. Tears mixing with the water of the pool, she stumbled her way back to the edge, then sank against the wall. The lake remained calm, but for a moment it seemed to her a raging ocean, waves splashing as high as her climbing fear.

I am truly sorry, the True Eye rumbled. If I could change this, I would.

“You promised us peace,” Aiedra rasped. She meant it to be a shout, but she could only manage a rasp after… after… after what she had seen. After watching that terrible sword, held up to the storm-filled Ethean sky. “Was that peace a lie? Why lie? Why tell us we would win, when that is in our future?”

You were promised an end, the True Eye said. I do not know fully the meaning of that prophecy, only that it is an end.

“You said you know everything. Then why? Why this?” Her voice broke again. “Please. Tell me why.”

A long silence. In this, the True Eye said finally, you have misunderstood. I know all that can be known, but some things cannot be. I cannot tell you why this must be. I am sorry, Daughter of Meridian. But do not say I did not warn you of this burden.

The True Eye’s misty form suddenly retreated, then vanished, too quickly for Aiedra to stop it. Furious, she shouted, screamed at the being, but it did not bring him back. Instead, the Surges on the wall slid into their slots, leaving her in darkness, save for the flickering torches.

Darkness. She felt it around her in more ways than one. She stood, trembling, for too long, before at last she steeled herself.

So Fate itself was against them. So be it. She would find a way around this, discover some path to fulfill the Prophecy, whether it was false or not. The True Eye might not have been able to tell her who the fabled hero was, but she could locate them herself. She would create a hero if she had to, would find a way to avoid that… that terrible future. She had fought too long, and too hard, to do anything else. She would succeed.

That was what she told herself. Though, even as she dried herself with a burst of heat, and pushed the worry off her face, even as she strode back to face the corpses of men she had just sent to their deaths for nothing, she wondered.

For she knew now, with more certainty than ever before, that if she failed, the galaxy would burn.