CARDINAL SHAFT
The name given to the tower which rises as if to pierce the sky,
built in the center of the artificial island on the ruined sea,
so ancient as to have lost its name, known now only as "Paradise".
The details of its purpose are long lost, along with those few who
passed them down through time, but nonetheless the attraction of
the tower is felt by many across the fog and throughout the world.
It is clear to all that the island is the work of the Imitators,
and there were not a few who worshipped it as the Paradise of legend.
But they were never able to reach it.
There were those who stubbornly turned away all who came.
Armies of composite beings of ceramic and steel, blocking all access
to the CARDINALSHAFT, without apparent motive or reason.
Silent guardians, known for time beyond memory as PRAYERs.
And so arose GRAVEYARD, an organization to combat those Beings
Without Consciousness using Beings Without Consciousness of their own.
To the masses, they--The Inhuman; The Ecstacies; The Judges--were to
defeat the PRAYERs at last.
Or perhaps they were to provide understanding of the PRAYERs.
It was a hope so faint as to require wording as roundabout
as that, but there was no one better for the task.
At least, now...perhaps now.
Perhaps, even if the machine had never resurfaced...
There those among them who would still have reason to seek it out.
"Caught in a web of something beyond inevitability--hetu, prataya. Fate."
Thus did others bend their story to fit the situation.
Yes, they wooed That which was before them, as if it were natural to do so.
No doubt there was no part within them which doubted It.
They were a group, together, unable to see things but in that way.
But the trials which obstructed them were far beyond any of their expectations.
Their second attempt resulted in a second failure, to no one's surprise.
Leaving aside the difficulty of each attempt, it was so each time.
The first attempt was an unmistakable, glorious defeat, but they reached farther
in the second, and the answers derived from that which they found were to guide
all future assays.
The great shaft shows signs of activity once more.
It is not the corpse of the dreams of days long past, but rather only sleeping,
dreaming behind close eyes.
And no doubt this is the last chance that They will be granted in the labyrinth
of hetu and prataya.
That was the answer they found.
But that was not what they were to speak of.
To them, it had but shown clearly the path they must take.
Now, the third attempt.
The time has come.
Even after having abandoned mortality, there is still a scar that aches.
They still remember it now.
A signal stronger than anything born of a transient body; a beacon, burning red.
All of it.
They will carry out the last will and testament.
While that light still shows the way--