VI. On the Last Saumen Kar

In the millennia after the sealing, the Saumen Kar gradually dwindled. Their civilization stripped of its knowledge, its history, its understanding of its own purpose could not sustain itself across the vast spans of time that the duty required. Generation after generation, they diminished, until the population that had once filled the Crown of the World contracted to a handful, then to a few, then to almost none.

Nearly five thousand years after his ancestors sacrificed their past to save the world, only one Saumen Kar guardian of the Nameless Spires remains: Ainamuuren. He has wandered the edges of the Crown of the World, alone, for centuries. He carries the blue marks. He feels the pull of the sacred duty. He does not fully understand what it means, though he knows more than his ancestors did in the generations immediately following the sacrifice time and solitude have allowed fragments of understanding to coalesce, if not full memory.

Recently, Ainamuuren met Seshu, a friendly Erutaki elder from the town of Aaminiut. To her, he began to pass on all he knew of his people and their story. He had long worried what would happen to the Saumen Kar’s pact if his entire people died out. He hoped that by sharing what he remembered, the duty might survive even if the last of its keepers did not.

This hope was tested sooner than he expected.