The original was assembled by Praedakesh Surit, a powerful Earth-aspected Terrestrial who served under a Solar of the first age. When suspicions later arose that her contribution was not praising her husband and other comrades who were slain in the fighting but rather her fallen master, she vanished. Her chapter, the last in the original book, is reproduced below.
My tears do not stop streaming. They fall like a torrential river, flowing forth from my eyes unbidden, pooling at my feet into a vast lake, seeping under the roots of the earth, turning all to slime. The ground sinks and joins my weeping, spewing forth its own salts.
I am alone, yet I am not. Two pale yellow eyes, slitted like the guillotine that takes life, watch me from the stunted undergrowth. She watches, eyes dry, while I weep enough for ten thousand. I think I see a tear start, but the eyes dive down, to be forever wet. I can hear them swimming, pulling away through the water, growing ever fainter, yet not not fading away.
I am lost though I know where I am. I have no captain, no joy. He is slain by the evil that grew among us. Cursed be the stars that oversaw his death. What madness drove us to this need? Who steers the ship we all ride?
Each night as I fall asleep on my bed of reeds, a ghost visits me. It is a bloody mouse, flayed and horrid, and yet it is not in pain. Each night it bears to me a line of poetry. Each night do I write it down in blood, saving it for all time. On the fifth night, he hands me his burden, then smiles and fades away, going wherever mice do when one cannot find them. I bind the lines together with promises, stronger than all the ropes in Creation, and stand back to admire our work. It is beautiful, but I am not:
In true love's heart lies true one's doom.
When the true tide shows does the heart shine.
When the true star shines does the heart beckon.
Past two lies and a lock stands the true slave.
The way of the fool lets doom strike twice.
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