It is not in the collected accounts of men broken by war, nor the decrees and laws of a kingdom, that one can know how life truly was before one’s time, for not all life ends in war, and not all life is lived in fear of law. But rather true life is shared between one person and another.

I have gone to great lengths to acquire, and have constantly risked my own life to break the seal of, the letters contained in this account. But risk matters little to writers and archivists. We are driven by that vain need for immortality, risk or not, granted to a rare few who have sought its power in written word. And so with perhaps little time left to finish this first, and hopefully not last, entry, I present to you what appears to be the first letter to Queen Ayana from a particularly peculiar, unnamed individual, whose known history I will later transcribe in this account, if my head remains still affixed to my shoulders.

To My Salvation,

There’s so much I want to say to you, if I had composed one letter for every day of the unknown lifetimes I’ve lived, it still could not say everything that that one night of your magic meant to me. For as far back as my memory can see, I never would’ve thought I’d find my way to someone whose eyes could see beyond my savagery, and whose love could shine beyond the face of a monster. I can’t be certain why I clawed my way up into your window that night; perhaps what I’d heard of you made me think you could be the one to end it all, to rid this body of its contorted memories and unholy abilities. To break my cycle and be my Final Sun. And that you did. I may still share my body with a monster, but you must’ve seen a human soul somewhere behind the glowing eyes, and knowing even one person was able to see that makes an unending future seem so much less like a living hell.

But now I fear for those close to you. The hunger and thirst that grow inside me from a long Day are not all I feel in light of the moon. No matter where I am, I can feel the direction of your pull as strong and clear as the face of the moon itself. That one night, nobody saw me. Nobody tried to stop me. Nobody could’ve stopped me. What happens when the hunger for flesh is no longer the strongest hunger the monster feels?

If ever I might hurt anyone close to you, anyone under your rule, anyone who doesn’t deserve it, and you’re there to stop me, I want you to rip me limb from limb, and to know that my departure from this world I’ve ravaged will be made all the sweeter by being granted the privilege to be moved with your magic.