Ashes of Man (Sun Eater, #5)

by Christopher Ruocchio

I knew . . . I knew when I started this account I must return to this, my blackest day. I thought I would be ready, thought that after all these years and centuries, after so many false starts, that I could write of her. Of her end. I thought that now, perhaps, I could say something of that bleak silence, that total silence in the Ascalon then. But there is nothing. Nothing. No words can enclose that silence, or capture the blackness on the holograph where she had been. I can write of that day only as a terrible emptiness, a void blacker than space. Mere words are insufficient, are too small to capture the chasm that had opened beneath my feet. I remember blood on the bedsheets from my wounded hands and side, and soot and cinder and the stink of wine. I would sooner relive every hour on the walls of the Dhar-Iagon, every night in the pit, blood dripping from my ear, would sooner stomach the blood and screaming of the Prophet’s coronation feast than endure that terrible silence. And yet it is ever by my side. I can hear it even now. It is with me always. If I but set down my pen and call her name . . . she will never answer me. Not ever again.