Author's Note

Though they constitute one of, perhaps the most important piece of Æternal work to us available, the Nightmare Ruins fragments have historically been the least useful in furthering our understanding of the language. Their peculiar style and rather self-referencing contents leave them a poor vessel for extrapolating connections between the meaning contained and what we know and understand. At once, they are also some of, possibly the most studied Æternal texts, precisely because of this difference. For some it's the thrill of curiosity the unknown inspires, for others the belief that their nature as the most distant from us makes them the most important in understanding the culture that produced them.

Stone-Eyed Abomination

Life-came-to-the-halls-of-Fire.

Fire-shone.

Life-beheld-Fire's-craft.

Fire-coveted-kinship.

Life-found-Fire's-craft-like-Fire's-enemy-on-the-merciless-of-Heaven's-domain-in-the-farthest-reaches-of-Earth's-domain.

Life-unveiled-a-kiln-of-power-and-raw-ice.

Life-brought-forth-lesser-of-lessers-of-its-children,-shards.

Fire-witnessed-unlife-blood-and-failure-to-conquer-Wind's-domain.

Life-shone,-and-unveiled-pilfered-essence-of-Darkness's-greater-deeplikesoul.

Life-placed-fang-and-talon-and-soul-venom-molten-sand-within-its-kiln.

Fire-witnessed,-ablaze-in-worship.

Life-sang-to-Fire,-its-duty-to-pay.

Fire-cast-itself-in-and-around-the-kiln.

Life-cast-itself-in-and-around-the-kiln.

Heaven's-domain-revolved-warped-in-minutiae-shredded.

Life-sang,-Fire-withdrew.

Unorder-roiled-within-the-kiln.

Life-blessed.

Fire-felt-claws-scraping-at-its-core's-chamber.

From-the-kiln,-twisted-life-emerged.

As-Fire's-craft,-sculpted-of-truth,-shrieking.

Shape-a-mockery,-wrath-filled-heart,-untime-in-its-glare.

Scale-and-talon,-fury-and-unorder,-venom-and-death.

Life-sang-as-pearls-on-Earth's-finest-domain.

Fire-in-spirit-inscribed,-in-heart-ablaze-heatless.