“The Halos will be fired,” he says. “They are being fired. They have been fired!”

With an agonized grimace, he collapses face-forward into the dirt and grass. His blood returns to the soil. The others try to sing, but give out only a low, deathly howl—what might be an old battle song, or perhaps conveying a final message from the Gravemind.

Its laughter haunting me across thousands of light-years.

In minutes, they are all dead, not from the effects of Halo, still to arrive in my time, this system’s time. Not from Halo, but from the cruelty of the Gravemind, using them as embodied messengers. A flesh-borne warning to me that victory is not sweet, that our crimes will haunt us forever, that we are not and never will be the inheritors of the Mantle.

And that we are about to destroy the greatest thing in the universe.

I summon Catalog. “Is the Juridical network open? Are you cleared for access?”

Catalog affirms that communication is possible.

“I need to send one last message to the Ark, to the IsoDidact. Bear witness.”

“That is what I do, Librarian.”

“Tell them what we have heard. Tell them I believe it is true.”

I think of the Didact, locked in his Cryptum. If the Domain is destroyed, I have condemned my husband to an eternity of darkness, silence, with only his own rage and madness to keep him company.

The message is sent.

I watch our powerful vessel splinter apart and bury itself deep, causing the ground to tremble around me while I wait with the remains of my poor humans, out on the dry grass in the heat of the afternoon sun. What is left of this ship will mine and leverage the raw materials of this vast savanna to build kilometer upon kilometer of portal. It may take a hundred years to complete, a process stretching out long after I am gone, well past even this world’s reseeding. But it will be worth it.

Who will use this portal?

Who will live to return here? And what will they think of this machine that I’ve buried? Those I have fought for, for so long. Those who, it is clear to me now, ultimately will and must inherit the Mantle. I can only hope that they will survive and upon returning, that they will find this portal and use it to travel to the Ark—in order that they might discover their rightful place in this galaxy, and the great responsibility they have finally inherited.

They are the last of my children. They must reclaim their birthright.

The sun westers. The air swirls and cools. Predators and scavengers come, but ignore me, and refuse the dead Warriors. The last gray and orange glow of day gives way to inky night. The air is very cold, the sky steady and clean. The stars have never seemed so many, never burned brighter.