Guiding Light Council,

My name is Edhain Arcan. I was born in Midsummer, in a tower of glass that has since broken, and the Womb of the World wove in me a will.

I make this declaration before the Eschaton's First World, to confess my sins and proclaim my reasoning, so that you may judge, o Guiding Light Council, that I am not my mirrorself from the Last World.

In awakened clarity on the merits of this age, my will has sharpened into a singular purpose: to break this world and see it forged anew. I broke my oaths and declared fresh intent to break the Soul Mirror: this time not to strengthen a King as his Knight, but to take his crown for my own. It was at this crucial turn of my will that Tolance's mirrors were placed.

As one mortal alone, I knew it would be impossible to enact my purpose. And though literate, I am no great scholar. I now warrant that those who flooded the battlefield of the world, who seemed in possession of similar goals as I, were in fact foe not friend.

Yet, I made the mistake of siding with the Seventh World.

It grants me no pardon to write I was distorted by rage and grief at the breaking of every oath I could break, but it is true. I did not fully understand the matter.

The Morninglord, He Whose Noose I Cannot Break, commands me to make amends, o Guiding Light Council, by seeking you out and aiding in whichever way I might, to strengthen the seals. My words are to be by what means you choose to accept my aid, or not.

Here are my words, as a story I might tell a child, in a gentler age, as she falls asleep, beneath the vault of guiding lights that shine upon a tower of hope.

~~~

After the Battlefield of the Seven-Pointed Star,
a queen of shadow's name found me awaiting further battle north of the Morgun.
"Are you here to duel?" I asked, and she said no. She was distrustful.

I did not understand, brave Ileia, for we had just spoken the past week.
Truly, I had striven hard to break the mirrors and break the world,
but I am not the only vengeful warrior with world-breaking dreams.
Even those who seek Paradise envision a new age.

"I am a spec in the planar spiral and the world does not bend for a spec,"
I told the queen of shadow, for those were words she had told me.
"I can accomplish nothing alone. I look upon the movement of other forces
as a time to strike in tandem.
When I recall the Nazedha chant of Lanu Du.
When I consider the Shadow Mother.
Even Drakkenmont.
They are hammers that could break this world,
for a world of justice to rise next."

She questioned me on justice, for the Shadowqueen,
Sheryni Nebre'seir, has ever believed it a lie.
I answered from a book I had past written on the Kingdom of Crowned Death.

"Our Eternal Mother wove within each of us the will to do what is right.
We are woven differently. By our own guilt is divine justice delivered,
and by the weight of warring wills mortal justice must be wrought."

"We summoned Lanu Du," spake the queen of shadow to me.
"And we fought the shadow plague. Chaos, Ohlsana, and the Seventh World
are forces that rob sapients of their will."

"If your mirrorself replaced you, Crow,"
said the dark queen who called me Crow.
"Would you still have your own will?"

The Shadowqueen, too, had no love for this world, strong Ileia.
But she spoke of will in such a way that I knew,
like a hammerblow to the very heart of me,
that the world-breakage heralded by such forces
was not the sort of world-breakage for which I strive.
It is the opposite. The mirrorself of my own will's purpose.

I fight for what I term justice;
that we, to the will with which we are woven, are true --
in whatever warped capacity we may manage,
through whatever scars our soul might incur upon the path of
Srahda's fate.

My purpose, willful Ileia, cannot be managed if our will is eradicated.

Thus, I would earnestly seek to strengthen the seals,
of the Guiding Light Council, for I imagine
such seals protect Aetolia against an invasion that would eradicate will.

And I bear remorse for my warfare alongside the Seventh World.
I pray the Guiding Light Council accept from me: apologies, and aid.

If such aid costs me, then I would pay the price,
for my heart is yet torn by the storm of divine justice.
Few things are worse than an oathbreaker, even if
Srahda's fate only ever intended that some chains be broken.

~~~


by my will,
Edhain Arcan


Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 20th of Severin, in the year 19 AC.