024 06MOON 21

The preparations are nearly complete. Every path accounted for, every sacrifice weighed until it felt meaningless to keep counting. I feel the division more sharply now, the fracture between what the Banditos stand for and what I am about to do in their name, or perhaps in spite of it. I do not expect them to understand me. I don’t even expect them to forgive me.

But you did not turn away. Even when you made it clear you hated the plan, even when every part of it went against what you believe, you stayed. You stood beside me anyway. That loyalty was not blind, it was chosen, and that makes it heavier than faith.

When this begins, I will not be seen as a man. I will become something else entirely: a symbol of absolute power, something the enemy cannot ignore or dismiss. I will carry that weight so you don’t have to. If I am remembered as a monster, so be it, because you will be remembered as the one who carried the fire forward. Whatever happens next, know this: I trust you completely. And for you, I will become exactly what this end requires.

- Clancy

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024 06MOON 21

By the time you find this, if you even do, you’ve probably already understood what I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud. I don’t intend to make it out of this. There are only two endings left for me now: I die trying to destroy them, or I become what they are. Either way, I won’t be walking back down.

I’m sorry. Not in the small, useless way, but in the way that knows you did everything right and still couldn’t change my course. You tried. You pulled, you argued, you stayed when it would’ve been easier to leave. None of that was wasted, even if it feels like it is now.

Whatever happens up there, please don’t follow me into it. Don’t turn this into another cycle. Save your people. Take them somewhere I couldn’t reach. Let them live in something cleaner than what I’m about to do.

If I become a warning, let that be enough. If I become an enemy, let me fall. Just keep going. Keep the fire alive.

- Clancy

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024 06MOON 23

I gave in. Not all at once, no, it was quieter than that, but enough to matter. Enough that the title fits now. Bishop. I feel it settle on me like a second spine, holding me upright even when I want to fold. I tell myself it was survival. I tell myself it was strategy. The words don’t argue back anymore.

The scouts returned days after the battle. They spoke carefully, like the ground might hear them. They said they found your body where the fighting thinned out, away from the worst of it. As if that detail was meant to soften something. I keep wondering if it hurt. If it was fast. If you had time to realize it was over, or if the dark took you before fear could. I hope, selfishly, that it was painless. You deserved that much, at least.

This isn’t how it was supposed to end. This isn’t what you stayed for. I can still see the fault lines, still feel where it all went wrong, and I know there’s a way to correct it, to fix this, if I just-

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