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I stand alone in the toatching the friction trails glow over the city, and wonder if this was not inevitable If all our hope was nothing ion that could not stand the test of tih my hair A tinkle comes from inside my armor I pull my son’s key from within and look down at it and feel an ache How can so so small ain, I feel as if he were here with me As if my ere by my side in these last moments The world was too cruel to them I was too cruel, in my oay But there was beauty For a moment, there was real beauty

I look down at the lost city and feel small comfort

I kept looking for hope in the world Expecting the world to supply deliverance if I plucked the right chords Deave enough effort But that is not the nature of the world Its nature is to consume In time, it will consume us all, and the spheres will spin until they too are consumed when our sun dies

Maybe that is the point of it Knowing that though one day darkness will cover all, at least your eyes were open to see ht

I pry open o’s Lykos soil into my hands I would have liked to see home once more before the end

There is a gust of air behind me

“Oh gods Brooding again? Soe,” a voice says

I turn to see a vision from the past “Cassius?”

“Hello, goodht need a hand”

THE STREETS RUN RED with blood and echo with screams

Darrow’s army is in full rout Mechanized soldiers from Atalantia’s orbital forces leave vapor contrails in the air Along the Bay of Sirens there is a great slaughter as men flee the city on foot or swi over the water TorchShips descend on the dark spaceport And in the courtyard before the Mound of Votum, thousands upon thousands of freed prisoners of war and ate

I watch after Kalindora as she is lifted away by Ash Legion ruesome, but not beyond the ability of the trauuilt for how I left her there to chase Darrow I could nothan the Praetorians I left her with, but leave her I did, and there is little nobility in that There is little nobility to any of this

There is a thump behind me Rhone’s hand drifts to his rifle I turn to see Ajax landing with a cadre of Ash Guard

The irony of his leopard hel back into its collar when his own Iron Leopards flow past, bloody and triumphant, my name on their lips, is lost to no one Least of all the insecure boy inside the dreaded man

He abandoned his men before the storm wall of Heliopolis