[Rose]

I could feel my head growing light and fuzzy. The darkness around me became a physical blanket of utter nothingness. Wisps of spiritual outlines flickered as shadows of light merging into the complete nothingness. My mind swam with thoughts. Each construction of intellect that was conjured forth reflected in the darkness around me as shards of fractured crystal. Memories played before my eyes, but each witnessed slipped from my conscious mind as though drawn from my eyes to the planes before me. The darkness shone as my mind broke into millions of fragments, drifting in all directions to become pinpoints of light. Distant stars illuminating the void.

At peace I gazed seeing myself from all directions at once, witnessing without eyes in harmony with all of existence. I swam between stars in timeless eternity, drawing closer to the understanding of existence with each eon. From the distance the black of space became a light blue like the awakening of a morning sky. And then brighter, and brighter it became. I could feel it as though the blue light were both matter and energy at the same time in some impossible way. My every sense became blue with my body as silhouette before the backdrop.

It was then I began to unravel. My matter unwound into its various parts. Limbs became individual, muscles became strands, blood veins and arteries individual, and steadily so further until the various parts became too small to see without specialized equipment. Vanished from existence my consciousness was left utterly bare and consumed by this blue light-that-was-not-light. Then I felt its voice, thought it did not make a sound. It spoke through me from thousands of dimensions, speaking infinite voices and languages at once, yet somehow all made sense to my mind.

"You have not earned your place here, but I will allow you to look. You may see your home and reach for it to know where you must go."

The terrible sensation of presence caused my being itself to contort in agony. Although I held no physical form the pain was of such incomprehensible agony as no worldly being could relate to. The very idea of existence became excruciating as the presence felt in absolute and pure rejection of everything that was ever known to simply be. Truly my mind was not ready to encompass it yet.

Suddenly the blackness returned, and with it the stars. Their light grew blinding and I felt a sudden sensation of movement. Through endless space I was thrust back in time and location alike. As blinding as the light was, so too was the darkness that came after. I woke up covered in leaves and dirt in a world I did not know. The stars were above me -the same stars I once swam with- although the world below was alien. My head ached and reeled of mental malaise which made the act of thought become as marching through bogmud.

I raised a hand upwards to the sky. I don't remember much of before. Only the barest of memories from a distant forever ago. Those fragments of my mind still drift in the emptiness of space. Home where I should dwell. Home where I shall return.

[Rose]

The Resting.
The Closed.

Born of the deep.
Born of horror.
Moved into motion.

The Resting.
The Closed.

It has desires. It has made three as one.


The Netherese are progressing through their golden age. Soon they will be ready for knowledge beyond... some enclaves may know, but not how to reach it. They know only Arcane magic. That is their fault, but some minds are capable of more. So much more unused potential. So much space to be filled.

I must return. I must return. The will has been presented to the guild of Valstiir. They may have minds capable of understanding. The things of Realmspace... I must return, with or without them. They will see the advantage of a Traveller though. How it will put them at advantage over other enclaves in the secret race to the stars.

[Rose]

I met a progenitor of mine. Its voice was the barest of whispers. It came to me and spoke of one of the ends to come. In so many time streams they combine and become knotted. Always at the same point. Blue light that was more than light filled everything with the death of a star. Its emptiness left the sphere barren. What is dead may not always truly die, it said. It began to show me more, but my mind is not ready for it yet. It is still tethered to this realm. I am not ready to return to the cosmic infinity.

It granted me a gift. Pulling space apart it presented Khirad in its brightness. At all points of time for the disaster Khirad shone. The Doom Star. The Star of Secrets. In its sight I learned. Some of this may be shared with the Netherese once I determine which point in time this stream has come to mark at. Perhaps a small fragment to open their minds to what will become of their people.

It left me. It beckoned me back to the stars. I will join it once able. We will. Others will come upon the journey to explore the final frontier.