Conquest. Warming as the long-ago memory of blue sun on my face. All the while reminding me of the exhilaration of existing outside the Throne World, if only for a short while. I live in this glory—a rare opportunity to step away from exile within that ascendant chrysalis, as I gather more cunning for my sparring with the Witch.

Surely, you placed me as her minder, my Witness, as a hardship to hone my intrigue.

But in this moment, astride a Pyramid once more with an upstart empire splayed before me, my purpose is truer than any found carved in the wretched stones of the globe that formed me.

Kalarahnda flashes beneath my gaze. Yellow haze streaks ruby clouds. The vaulted ring surrounding Kalarahnda shatters into a shimmer-like, windblown sand—a prescription against the folly of confidence writ across a million-million ceramic shards.

I live in this glory—because the full purity of their extinction was stolen from me.

Because without predication of my own, a cult had sprouted in apocalyptic jubilation of the Darkness and blessed oblivion.

They grew for years in the shadows, drawing the disillusioned from the poorest to the wealthiest. These Polyps of the Longshadow sensed—as if by providence—a coming end and believed the breaking of the vaulted ring to be the final sign: they would ascend and bring their kind with them. Moments before their world was mine, their enzymatic armaments scrubbed all life from this wet rock. A guileful theft. Triggered by my own glorious coming.

And there was nothing calling to the Witch's involvement, save the twist in her face that betrayed restrained delight.