Subject to the Finality's mercy from an ancient accord, Hailqas'an returned once more from frigid death, the disquiet in her mind growing with every moment she faced her impossible task alone.

The struggle was immense. Between the emboldened creatures of the Tide and the defensive efforts of the increasingly frenzied Hailqas'an, the task of the Cyrenian Resistance seemed almost insurmountable without a refocusing of their efforts. After carving out a brief foothold, Keorin, Commander of the Resistance laid out her orders: secure Blu at all costs.

As the rest of the Resistance engaged with the Lethal Weapon in the defense of their home, the Shieldlord Kaden Vas'amaen-Ashaela squared off in deadly battle against the amaranthine spawn, leaching away the fog's power with creature after creature slain. At long last, the fog had no choice but to retreat from the locale to regenerate, and thus did Cyrene secure their opportunity to strike.

Great gouts of living sable bound their beloved Guardian Dragon to the ground, the featureless shadows stolen from the reprocessed citizenry engulfed forever by the wicked Tide. In featureless agony did they scream their torment, turned against the very city they once cherished.

The unwilling binds proved no match for the dragonflight of the Resistance, who descended upon the living coils with the fury of a people gravely scorned. The enchantment lasted mere moments against the onslaught, and as the fire-wreathed claws of Khalyon Baranova cleaved the last strand in twain, the azure eyes of Blu were thrown open once more, the great Dragon free at last from the machinations of the Tsol'teth.

As he roared his triumph into the skies of the Vashnars, the final strand anchoring Hailqas'an to clarity snapped. Occupied with the affairs of Mhaldor and Ashtan, her kin could provide no support. Against the myriad, she stood.

Alone.

And so began her lament:

"May darkness take me, lead me into the true night. As the Line does, so too do I renounce them! Am I to become Forsaken? No! It cannot be true! Join me in my grave, for what I cannot attain, none shall have!"

The amaranthine Tide gathered at her call, the power of her beckoning too great to ignore. And then, she uttered the unspeakable, the word of death and despair, the word that had riven entire armies in twain, and levelled mountains...

"Hailqas-sennad!"

Earth upon stone shattered beneath her feet, the passage of the word of power too much for their weakened mass to bear. All of Cyrene quaked at the very core of its foundations, the Muurn sloshing angrily against the streets it had once claimed only moments ago.

Destruction reigned. As the dirt raged below like waves upon the Sea, urban Cyrene crumbled and broke, the Mojushaine Hold collapsing upon itself in a wall of heaving rubble. Soon thereafter, the Cyrenian Clock Tower followed suit, toppling down upon Bard's Way with enough force to dislodge the road from its mountainside perch, the sonorous bells at its height condemned to never peal again.

There, Hailqas'an met her final end, entombed beneath the falling tower.

Silence held supreme. The First of Six was no more. Cyrene was free.

But at what cost?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Summary: After many months of planning and execution, the Cyrenian Resistance successfully mounted a reclamation assault on their homeland during the twinned Tsol'teth assaults upon Ashtan and Mhaldor. With the aid of the wizard Hycanthus and a stealthy sapper, they managed to rejoin the spirits of the Muurn and an underground river beneath the Vashnars, whom the Tsol'teth Hailqas'an promptly named as Shuun'eludiela, the Snow's Tears. After freeing the Guardian Dragon of Cyrene, Hailqas'an's tenuous grasp on sanity irrevocably snapped, causing her to invoke a terrible Terminus incantation that all but destroyed most of urban Cyrene, killing herself in the process.

Penned by My hand on the 11th of Scarlatan, in the year 800 AF.