Excerpt from the recovered diary of Sensaros.
You do not bargain with The Silence. Once you are chosen, you are chosen. I came into contact with this phenomenon while culling the cults infesting the empire. They worshipped this thing, bartering with ritual sacrifices for the gift of immortality. Never did I believe their ramblings. They raved and ranted nonsense until the moment I cleaved their throats and hanged their families. The empire was strictly atheist, we had no gods.
I was never frontline infantry in the wars of the empire. The desert tribes were half my lineage. As a half-blood, my physique wasn’t fit to bear the weight of the black iron. But I was fit to war with domestic enemies.
I bargained with it to let me sleep. Never did I receive a response. In the darkest corners of my bed chambers, it stared into me. That is how it begun. When I managed sleep, it gave me dreams. Of burning cities, ashes and scorched ruins. My soul, it tortured my depths, egging my hand to do its bidding. Never with words, but with ghastly visions.
I gave it a name. The Silence. As I started speaking to it, it occurred to me, this must be how the first cultists of each sect came to refer to it, then revere it. But worship, it does not respond to. There is no persuading this being. It has no form, no shape, nothing. It merely plagues one with nightmares until the soul is numb to death.
Best I could describe it is to compare it to compulsion. A wind of compulsion that blows in your direction obsessively, until you move. Your body becomes a prison from which the soul cannot escape, for your flesh will not be cut, your bones crumble not. It eats your mind unless you kill.
I sought a means to end myself before I turn into another champion of The Silence. A weapon. I thought it was a rumor, until my efforts uncovered it. My last hope, to die peacefully. But as you can guess, reading this, I came to another decision entirely.
My decision was to endure. To research and record everything, so that those who would uncover my works, would be able to finally stop this. The Silence, as far as I understand its mind through the visions it granted, desires merely to kill worlds. Either its machinations are beyond mortal understanding, or they are just that horrifyingly simple.
This being is ancient beyond time. It’s the antithesis of creation. It hates the light and disappears when it is bright, and returns as the night comes. I have now lived long enough, thanks to its gift, that the races of the world have rediscovered the technology to watch the stars. From this I have discerned, our world is unique. Every other one circles a brightness. We circle nothing, we move nowhere. Ours emits light on its own.
You may wonder how I preserved my sanity despite being chosen. It was the weapon, it speaks to me.
