Penned as the final rays of twilight set on the final day of the Accords and a new Age began for all peoples of Avaleen. An age of peace and prosperity, of rebuilding and reconnection. Or so they thought.
It is done.
The ink is still drying on the parchment, yet I can scarcely believe it. After centuries of war, years of bitter debate, and countless sleepless nights spent navigating the tangled web of politics, we have an agreement. The Accords stand.
I should feel victorious. I should feel something. And yet, as I sit here with this quill in hand, staring at the flickering candlelight, all I feel is empty exhaustion.
The negotiations were a war of their own kind, one fought not with steel or arcana, but with words, half-truths, and the weight of history pressing down on every breath. The Illevan delegates came armed with grievances centuries old, wounds they swore still bled. The Akati envoys were no different, their pride sharp as any blade, unwilling to bend even as their own people cried out for peace.
And I? I stood in the middle, a soldier in a diplomat’s skin. By blood belonging to one side, by heart fighting for both.
What did I do? For such a momentous moment, I struggle to remember what I have done. Struggle to recall stories to tell our future children. I spoke when I needed to, held my tongue when silence was the better weapon. I wielded reason as a shield, rhetoric as a sword. Some called me naive, others a traitor. Neither is true. I know war, more intimately than any of them. I know its cost. That is why I fought for this treaty as fiercely as I ever fought on the battlefield.
Still, I do not fool myself into believing this is the end. The Accords are but a fragile thing, ink on paper, promises that can be broken as easily as they were made. Peace is not won in a single day, it is fought for, every day, in a thousand small ways.
I have done my part. Tomorrow, I will return home. I guess that means Agartha Nova now.
