“Credera,” he started, but then was silenced by a quick motion of Roena’s hand.

“I bid you gratitude for your patience, Herald,” she said sharply, taking the scroll from him, and studied, for the briefest moment, the crimson ribbon that clenched it so firmly in place. At one end, the threads were smooth and connected; she traced her finger over them, and smiled (perhaps it was a smile) at her curiosity. At the other end, the threads had become frayed, and she barely had to pull at the ribbon for the string to come unraveled. She let it fall, devoid of the slightest innocence; an object of passion, obscuring the quest for knowledge.

The young woman sits near the remains of a sun-kissed riverbed. She runs her hand through tall blades of yellowed grass. She is borne on an exultant wind, part of a sky that does not seem to end or does not want to.

A merchant had left his cart somewhere in the middle of a narrow street, leaning against an alley wall, discomfited - for there was no way of moving it — in its solitude. It bothered him, somehow, this disorder. It bothered him that some people had the liberty to do as they pleased, and others could merely watch. In one hand exists those who live, and in the other, all who have died and can only watch the proceedings of the world from without — it was like that, he decided, like life coupled with a hand of death, inescapable until the pinnacle of understanding where they met. Suddenly everything was clear; suddenly, everything was gone.