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The noises disappear.

“I don’t think it’s an actual battle,” I murmur, surveying the illustration once more. It’s so detailed. So realistic. More like a photo than a painting.

Before the sounds of war return, I flip the page and continue the story.

As the world fell apart all those alive began to fear there would be no recovery after centuries of damage. Too much had changed; nothing remained unmarred by destruction.

Finally, after weeks of messages passed in secret both sides agreed to meet.

Eight delegates were chosen. Four representing the Light and four representing the Shadow. For months they argued with words as outside, the world continued to fade and change.

In the end, only two paths remained. Continue fighting until either no one remained to fight for the world, or there was no longer a world remaining to fight for.

Or remove themselves from this world completely.

When asked, all eight answered the same.

And so, separately, Light and Shadow gathered their peoples and wove themselves and their realms away. They locked themselves in the place between breaths—where even time could not find its way in.

The Light sealed the Gates with their own life's blood. Save a singular token, they left nothing behind.

Only the faint melody of their voices—a song that even now can only be heard in those still, silent moments between breaths. Within that song linger the hopes of a people. The dreams of an empire. The sorrow of thousands upon thousands, those who sacrificed everything for the mere chance that the world and those it belongs to may have enough time to heal before the pain that was yet to come.

Soon, legends of their beauty and grace, myths of their love and kindness, and lore of their brilliance and gifts faded into nothingness.

Until the world forgot them completely.

Just as all stories—even the most beautiful—will fade when there remains no one living who remembers.

And those who did, find their memories unnaturally slipping away, like mist on a chill, foggy night.

The four figures depicted at the beginning of the book return, but this time they’re in a circle, their hands linked, heads bowed, and faces lined with expressions full of pain and grief and… hope?

I get the impression that these four figures are accompanied by thousands more just like them. They’re not meant to be a literal representation of four singular lives, but of an entire Species collectively.

How…? How could I possibly know that?

I know nothing about art. I’m not the kind of person who can look at a painting and tell you that the blue car the subject is driving represents the painter’s inability to travel through life without depression as a vehicle or whatever.

I mean, I simply don’t understand it.

But somehow, looking at these figures, I know with absolute certainty that they’re meant to symbolize thousands upon thousands of others.

Fates, this is so disturbing.

What makes it even more disturbing, however, is the river of red that runs from the insides of their wrists. The blood—because that is most certainly what it is—streams down their hands, flowing between their linked fingers in steady streams that fall to the Earth, merging into shimmering pools at their feet.

Reflected in the still surface of blood are images. Mountains, forests, fields, rivers, and oceans. But they’re twisted, as though they’re bending or folding in on themselves. The water of the rivers and oceans warps like melted wax, and the mountains, hills, and trees curl and arc inward like a volcano collapsing in on itself after erupting.

The entire world… all of it… gone.

“They died,” I whisper, feeling shocked by an overwhelming sensation of loss. My brain wants to skip this part. Turn the page. But my fingers won’t work.

I don’t know who these people are. Hells, I don't even know if they’re real. But the idea of an entire Species—because that’s what the figures standing in a circle, hands linked together and blood at their feet represent, I know it is—dying in some last-ditch attempt to save the world is so impossibly heartbreaking.

Eventually, Riven reaches out and gently turns the page for me. Even then, the feeling of loss is still there, wrapped around me like a shroud.

One day, the Gate they sacrificed everything to close will open once more. For not even life, however freely given, can pay for eternal rest. Not even the loss of an entire people can unmake what Fate itself has decreed must occur.