Things have changed, haven't they, Ikora? I, no longer the rigid Praxic exemplary; you, no longer the untouched icon of the Warlocks.

But you are still an icon.

We are mired in it, Darkness and intrigue, but it has always been thus—the only difference being the tools in our hands and the wisdom that guides us. The Pujari Position we set aside; the Praxic Creed we revisit.

We try again.

This second potential apocalypse—not much like the first, the Witness's work. Existential, yes; potentially devastating, yes, those apparent similarities. Is there reasonable difference between unmaking and destroying? To doom something to having never existed… what is that? Mourning potential? Would there be a wound left to show the absence? Would anything be left at all?

Could it remain to us only as an imagining? Think of a world where we rebuilt many cities, where the Last City is first among her siblings. The people and the networks and the shining thing we rebuilt out of the Collapse.

Could it exist? Did it ever exist? Is that what our losses might be now—just what-ifs we tell each other by firelight? You find me, Ikora, caught between the old and the new, mired in the brutal indecision of which way to move forward. Certainty, my old friend, deserts me. All I know is this: We must be ready.

And I know we cannot be ready.

We must try anyway.