It hurt to look upon it, even for him. His Elder Brother, who had Shaped the sun of the Souma’s light, had Shaped this thing of its absence, from the lightless cracks of its shattering. On the battlefield, Men had averted their eyes, and even the Ellylon had wept to behold it. It held the darkness of all things lost and broken beyond repair—of the Souma, of the concord of the Shapers, of the Sundered World itself.

I am one of those things, he thought, turning the Helm in his hands. Broken beyond repair. Abandoned and bereft, cast out by those who once loved me.

And so thinking, he set about tuning its darkness to his own despair.

In it he placed his abiding frustration at his Elder Brother’s stubborn pride, and his own hatred of the role he had been condemned to play. He placed into it his anguish at his siblings’ betrayal, shaded with profound sorrow and honed keen with rage—for they had all betrayed him, all of them. He gave Shape to his own self-loathing, to the memory of futile defiance, to that moment, that terrible moment, when the world was Sundered and the seas rushed into the chasm, and he knew himself defeated and alone.

Of helpless torment he Shaped it, of the memory of crawling upon the heaving earth, clutching at it in his pain while the long arm of his brother’s wrath pursued, shifting the very sun until his skin blackened and cracked, and he was forced, bellowing, to flee once more. Of countless days and nights of bitter convalescence he Shaped it, of the awareness of his lost Gift and the dire knowledge that he was maimed beyond repair, that his name had become a curse on the lips of his brother’s Children. He Shaped it of sheer loathing at the cowardice of his Elder Brother, who dared not cross the Sundering Sea, but worked ever at a distance.

Of the grief at all fair things lost, he Shaped it, and the bittersweet pleasures he found to fill their place—of vengeance and rancorous triumph, of the dawning knowledge that he was well and truly abandoned, a rebel Shaper casting a threatening shadow over his siblings’ dearest labors. Of a faint, desperate thread of hope, he Shaped it; and the sure knowledge that hope was doomed.

Of searing pain he Shaped it, of impotent fury, of the remorseless agony of his wounded flesh, of the slow drip of ichor that bled from his wound, of the slow drip of malice that poisoned his heart, fed by generation upon generation of hatred endured.

Of unflinching truth, he Shaped it.