I find myself once more stalking the night, my Witness, unknown as their final gasps. But my sojourns are no longer otiose errands. I am no more a predator among the Ahslid than the weaver is a predator of flax. Death creates gaps into which my progeny rises and stokes paranoia to tighten their fists. Each carapace crushed winds the clockworks my hands assemble.

They no longer need my direct ministrations. My children have children—some bequeath my lessons. The favored spawn are those who learned my lessons well. They converge on my shape, and unprovoked, prepare banquets of wisdom on which their kin gorge. They craft weapons—little more than hurled rocks standing in the long shadow the Darkness casts—but enough to crack their world apart. Only Uun disappoints, frightened as he is now by his own potential for glory. I cut him free of my succor. Obscurity is the crueler fate.

You taught me the most precious lesson of irrelevance. Only purpose can be momentous. It is the moment of clarity that freed me from worldly soil. This final gift I withhold from my progeny. It is the most challenging lesson to teach, and I stand in awe of the elegance with which you revealed the truth to me. I cannot do the same without reflection. I have imitated myself all too well, but to imitate you, my Witness, it is the one challenge to which I find myself unworthy.