As the Raven flies. (AoA)

This world is rotten.

I am not the first, nor the last to think such a thing, but it was a realization that came to me slowly. I suppose it began to dawn upon me shortly after I found the first black strand interwoven with the gold.

I have nothing left to live for, after all.

I spent many years in the cold. I am not entirely sure why, exactly. Those memories grow fainter with each passing year. Their faces grow dim. I remember a sightless child, his back turned to me, the snow driving all around, whipping his soft cloth robes. I remember a woman with pale golden hair, the smoothness of her naked alabaster shoulder, lying slowly upon sand. I remember an Elvaan with flowing red hair and eyes that lashed and burned, the way his lips twisted, the way his eyes anguished. I remember kneeling before delicate, tiny-boned feet sheathed in velvet. I remember a cermet door, and my soul perishing on the other side.

It was supposed to be my destiny, I think, to die on the other side of that door. Perhaps that is why the black appeared.

So, I wandered in the cold. It was for several years, I think, and memories grew hazy, the mind apathetic to forget. It was silent there, and the entire world held its breath as it shifted beneath my feet. I grew stronger, twisting in mind and body even as my arts sharpened to a finely-honed edge. I have never been so powerful as I am now, and my thoughts have grown sharp and clear, as well.

I had nothing left to live for, I thought to myself at that time, and I yanked away the black when it appeared. Death will surely come on swift wings for me. Those who have nothing to lose are extraordinarily dangerous, but toward what end did I sharpen my skills, hone my craft? What good was a warrior without his soul?

I left the cold at that time, although I was not particularly sure where I was going, or what I would do there. I simply walked. I had money aplenty, though I cared little for it anymore, and took jobs such as interested me, abandoning them undone if they tired me. I felt nothing more like love or hatred in my heart, and my mind felt clear and uncluttered. The voices of others, unheard for so long, sounded loud in my heart and in my ears, and I sorted them disinterestedly. Where once I would have held my mind back for fear of prying or intruding, I now looked dispassionately. I wanted to know how others' minds worked. I wanted to know if I could find the secret to this clarity in their own noisy consciousnesses.

What I found was filth and depravity, selfishness and desire, greed and lasciviousness. Not even children were pure; even the wisest of elders thought only of themselves and their own shallowness. Human minds, I realized, were as a pool of pure, clean water upon which floated a thick film of black oil, filthy and viscous. No matter how I thirsted for the water beneath the refuse, I could not reach into that water without first plunging myself through the oil. And yet, plunge I did, again and again, straining through the taint of human weakness for that seed of light that had to be within each person.

The more I reached into human hearts in such a way, the greater the blackness spread, so that soon, the gold was mostly hidden. The result was somewhat visually unappealing, but I could no longer cut the black away from the gold, or brush my hair in such a way that the black was hidden. The black was encroaching, becoming the predominant color. I had not been among people for some time, but nor had I communed with the souls of animals; it was in humans that my detached interest lay, and in humans that I sought the answer. My Beastmaster's clothes lay under a thick layer of dust, and I forswore heavier armors for only the lightest of hakama and loose robes. I rarely felt cold or heat as it was. I had become barely alive, I think, and yet my mind was as alert and awake as it ever was.

I understood people now. I saw with open eyes the answers to all of the mysteries that had troubled me in my youth. Why he had vanished--why she had turned toward me--why he raged and burned so--why she closed the door behind her. The answers to everything lay within that filth that lay upon each of their souls. And, I supposed, my own. Perhaps this was the meaning of the black that had encroached onto me.

I am utterly alone in this knowledge. I alone of all of the ancients remain. I linger among humanity yet, but I am as removed from them as a single black raven amidst a flock of docile white geese; and I alone know how this must be fixed.

The answer has come to me. I alone am free from love, free from attachments, free from reasons to live, free to raise my hand and push open the Gate of the Gods. For I understand now with this complete clarity why Kam'lanaut and Eald'narche thirsted so for perfection. Only in the torrent of power that washes from the the Gate may mankind be cleansed.

Humanity is evil. I shall purify this Vana'diel, and erase all hint of evil.

This I promise.