The Last Word
- The last words of Thelonius the Scribe - Part VI (End)
"Once again, I take up my quill, though my hand trembles. The candle is low. The ink thinned. This may be the last time.
They told me they would come again, the Fay. And I feel them now. Just beyond the Veil.
This morning, a bird came to my window. The first I have seen in years.
It bore a letter, wrapped in worn cloth. Its feathers were grey, its eyes bright. When I unrolled the parchment, it did not fly away. It stayed. Watching. Silent. It did not sing.
The letter was from Elric, a young scribe of rare promise, whom I once met in the vaults beneath Kerys, while aiding Lady Duine and her Sanctuary keepers burying relics from the reach of evil hands.
He writes from a hollow in the mountains, where a few still endure. He writes of snow and roots. Of a well that runs clean. Of elders who remember the Redeemers. Of children born in silence, taught to pray with their hands. He speaks of wanderers who walk beyond the veil, and of stories whispered in firelight.
He writes with doubt, and with hunger. He asks after the Scions.
He says a druid spoke the name once, before vanishing into the mists. He says they do not sleep, but rise from the dark. That one of them wept when a vine reached across a shattered shrine.
He asks: What are they? Why do they return? What thread, do they carry? And to what loom?
I do not know how to answer. But I know this: if Elric is alive. And others, too. If he speaks the truth, then there is still some hope. There are still righteous. There are still echoes. There are still hands that reach. To remember, and to hold.
I have no strength left for a full reply. But I leave this page open. Let the bird carry what it can.
If you read this, know you are not the last. Whether you were born beneath the storm, or rose from sacred stone, you are part of the turning.
The world is not yet unmade. There is still time to turn toward the Divine. And still time, perhaps, for the Divine to turn back.
Night falls. The candle gutters.
They told me they would come again, at the end. I feel them now, just beyond the Veil. Not wind, not rain, but something older. A grace that watches, and waits.
If they come tonight, I will go to them. Not in fear, but in faith.
I leave these words in Lunthyr, where the dead still dream. And I go to rest among them."
—Thelonius the Scribe Last Keeper of Hidden Light Scriptorium of Lunthyr, Year 3999