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I had almost passed into that final darkness when suddenly,
my mother’s hand reached out for me. I grasped at it with all
the hope of a lost child, but I was too slow. Death had me by
the bones of my last breath, and it would not relent its grip.
My mother wept. “You have failed me, Vincent. Yet I
wish you all the peace of the dead. May you sleep soundly,
my poor, twilit prince.”
I tried to ask for her forgiveness, but emptiness had
replaced my voice. I had come so close to freeing us all, so
close!
Blackness—inert and endless—piled atop me, became
me, and I joined the great company of dead, defeated wolves.

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