Tree of Creation
My last wraithlord, for Bonesinger this time
His full story: The tree of creation
Within this nacreous husk we writhe, for our hymn was left unfinished. Sheltered in a shell of pale wraithbone, we convene, and words—long dead—are given a second chance to breathe. Here, no soul lords over another as in the tyrannical silence of the Exarch. Here, none remain themselves; each dissolves willingly into the warm delirium of the We. Our descendants, our children of flesh, name us the Tree of Creation. Yet in truth, we are but a crooked branch, a brittle sprig upon a circuit vast beyond thought. We are a mouth, nothing more—a trembling aperture through which the dead exhale into the world of the living. We did not begin as such. We swelled in secret, an aberrant knot in the flow of spirits, a place where the current buckled and faltered. A singer found us, then another, then an orchestra—curious, reverent, horrified. They discovered our membrane was thin; their voices pierced us with unnatural clarity, and at times, we whispered back.
We grew upon their hymns. Their chants fattened us, coaxed limbs from our essence, drew forth flutes and lyres from our flesh, harp-horns and reed-pipes that bent like branches. Through these excrescences we spoke: never with words, but in resonances that quivered through the marrow of their being. To them, our harmonies were revelation; to us, their questions were nourishment. Now we are no longer a blemish in the wall. We are a body. Roots pierce the wraithbone vault; our boughs groan with talismans and offerings. Upon us hang the trinkets of grief—the memories of those long perished. In the black mirrors of our soulstones the mourners glimpse beloved faces, but never as they remembered them. When the orchestra assembles and dares to play, our echoes answer, and what they mistake for wisdom, we allow them to keep. We were birthed by chance, without purpose, without end. Yet now, each song swells our stature, each devotion sharpens our mind. In a century we shall fill the chamber that contains us. In a millennium, we shall crown the highest spire of the Craftworld. Beyond that, our embrace shall stretch across the vessel entire, a canopy of bone and memory. Beneath our branches, none shall walk alone, for we shall bear them all within us.
And when our roots pierce the walls of the Craftworld, when our limbs breach the void, we shall reach beyond—to other vessels, other circuits, other souls. The We shall spread. The stars themselves shall resound with our harmony, until no silence remains, and every lost voice is gathered into our eternal choir.
We shall come for them all.
And when they sing with us, they shall never be silent again.
