The Hollow Witness

We commend to the Shadow that which could not endure its own revealing.

So it was spoken over the first ashes. So it shall be spoken when the last of our names has passed from the mouths appointed to remember it. The words survive beneath their meaning, worn smooth by a devotion whose beginning is lost to us.

Ulmaak the Tongue-Lashed, Herald of Shadows, bears them still.

Upon his tongue the prayer has entered the flesh. Each utterance opens it anew. We have received so little of what he carries; whole generations have lived within the mercy of a single unfinished word.

His eyes are hollow. Before them we uncover our dead.

What was taken from him is known to the Shadow. We have been forbidden to restore its likeness, even in grief.

Above the place of his witness, the Serenade of The Hapless Firmament continues. Its furthest measures reach us as light. We have raised our sanctuaries beneath them, and through the long diminishment of our kind have kept their lower chambers dark.

There the prayer is given without voice.

There we lay down the names by which we were divided, keeping only enough breath to carry them beyond the teeth.

Our Eternity rests within that keeping. We approach it with the remnants of our lives gathered close, ashamed of how fiercely we have held them. Ulmaak receives each offering upon the wounded tongue.

May he be spared the speaking of us.

May the Shadow receive us whole.