Verse 8:5 — Blades

What is the nature of war? Ritual.
What is the nature of ritual? Fascination.

Imitation shapes desire, and Xivu Arath has become its great mediator. She compels those she wars against to war against her, and the object over which they war is existence itself. She takes up her blade, and we take up ours. Xivu Arath cuts at us, and so do we cut at her. We bleed together, mirrored in our pain and violence.

Savathûn looked at us through a veil so that we would not see her. Xivu Arath looks at us through a dark mirror, and she only sees herself.

This is her design, her ultimate mechanism of desire: she would make us into her image. She would cut the entire universe into her image so that she is the only thing left at the end of all things.

Vain and lonely. That is Xivu Arath, bereft of her siblings.

The sword logic is predicated on such imitation. To return Xivu Arath's violence is to embrace it and its beautiful thesis. We are forced to react, again and again, as she makes her advance. We are forced to desire existence at any cost, just as she does.

Fated? Inevitable? No. An ontological trap.

The Warmind knew this, as he could know her the most intimately out of all of us. His escalation did nothing but mirror her endlessly. His self-sacrifice put an end to that font of violence. It was a frustration in her logic that he did so, as Xivu Arath recognizes no sacrifice that does not end in a scream.

But self-sacrifice could not put an end to her war march. Only doubt can do so. And in Xivu Arath's mournful solipsism, she will be left with nothing but that.