No Archon, no Kell, no hand on the docking blade. None of us hungrier for Ether than a Baron. This is what we said. This is what we believed. If Exile has a creed, it is this: we will not be led.

But if Levaszk my friend tells me that we must have an Archon to make our Gift-Ether, how can I say no?

My hatchlings, you thriving scraps of Exile, Levaszk saved your lives like he saved mine. Brought us far out of range of Dusk and the deathless monsters eating the Light of the Great Machine. Life is soft here—so fresh from the molt, a touch would bruise its shell.

He says that this world is a gift, that we can relinquish the base Ether of Sol to breathe its presence. We will become weighty, meaningful followers of a true path.

Is this our true path? Exiled from Riis, then from our own Houses? This I don't know. The Great Machine left us and took our true path from us, I think. I was not born to a kind fate.

But Levaszk offers us a path.

Look, this is my last Ether seed. This is the end of the cache I kept hidden from all of you. Look, I release the valve. See it rising purple into the air—the last breath of Ether wheedled from Luna's bare ground.

Our Servitors could set up the light-arrays, coax what bare scraps of Ether we could get from solar power. I could breathe it and survive. But Levaszk my friend and Archon says that we can breathe the Ether of this world, heavy with dark matter, and do more than survive.

Fated or not, there is only one path for us.