And yet, none had returned home. All but these had died, warriors and protestors, executioners and commanders. All had sacrificed themselves rather than return with the burdens of what they had done, what they knew.

The greatest effort ever made by Forerunners up to that time had vanished here in Path Kethona like water soaking into sand, while those who stayed behind, in our home galaxy, wiped clean all memory of the expedition.

History surrounded us everywhere, no beginning and no obvious exit. Like the old female, I had become a chalice filled with poisonous truths, reshaping all I knew and felt about the power and beauty of being a Forerunner.

She finally broke her silence. “What do you see?” she asked.

I could not answer. I was no longer the Librarian. I had become thousands. Their spirits rose up and spoke in me, struggling to confess.

The old female and I followed the canyon’s slight bends and curves until we lost sight of the entrance. We walked through the night and into the next day. The morning sun rose precisely in the cleft between the two walls, at this curve in the valley, and illuminated both sides equally, a dusty golden dawn accompanied by a faint breeze and the rustling of mosses climbing and carving during the day, resting during the night.

The mosses, of course, were as much descendants of those Forerunners as this old female and all other life on this dry, spare world. All carried too many ancient memories.

When my crew arrived and took me up, we had nearly reached the end of the great cleft.

I was stunned into silence. After such knowledge, what? What could we do?

What can I do?

The seekers landed. Keeper and Chant took us back to the town, and there we left the old female. Her last glance through the open hatch was one of sisterhood—and pity. She smiled and lifted her hand in farewell.

I now understand why humans smile. Forerunners have done all they can to banish smiles. Not all smiles are about greetings and joy.

Some smile in shared pain.

* * *

Audacity returned to the Orion complex in several great jumps. I thought our mission had failed; we had not found the origin of the Flood.

The original Didact never told me what the timeless one said when he visited the timelock on Charum Hakkor, nine thousand years before our expedition. Only the duplicate he made for me, the duplicate who lived to return, had the courage to reveal what his original had witnessed.

After years of festering, those memories from another rose to his surface like wounded flesh expelling an ancient shard of shrapnel.

My own shards … Still embedded. Still festering.