Author's Preface

I did not wish to write this.

When I was young on Eridan, it was still believed that history could be preserved like crystal: pure, unclouded, precise. We trusted the Scribes to remember for us. We trusted ourselves to remain steady in their shadow.

Now the Scribes are fading. Their memories fracture. Our own records are full of omissions, contradictions, deliberate blasphemies and accidental truths. No single thread remains unbroken. We have lost more than we remember. We remember more than we understand.

So this work—this gathering—is not a history in the old sense. It is a mourning. It is a salvage operation. It is the best I can offer before the last embers go out.

I have ordered these fragments as faithfully as I could. Where the records were whole, I transcribed them. Where they were broken, I left the gaps exposed, like wounds. Where later hands have glossed or redacted, I have marked their fingerprints but not erased them. I make no claim of finality.

Let the future readers—if there are any—know this:
We were here. We tried to remember. We tried to understand.
Forgive us where we failed.
Forgive yourselves when you do the same.

—The Historian
Church at Eridan
Year 4086 After Earth Departure