It’s the end of another day, and you can see the sun beginning to dip below the horizon. Its yellows and whites fade to red and orange as the duskborn curtains douse the flames of the fiery eye.

End of watch, another final time. An eon past when morning first graced the tender dew of night and whispered awake the symphony of daylight, this act was unthinkable. A profane suggestion that things might, eventually, need to pause for a breath. Darkness.

Yet a promise lingers.

The oncoming threat of darkness and its baleful silvery eye can only procure a modicum of fear from the the guardian. Darkness is not itself the danger, but what comes in the night. Fear, terror, anxiety, its razor laws pulling at the tender flesh of the mind.

The promise lingers on in the fading visibility, as photons are excursed from the sensitive nerves in the oculus. Even as the last lights are extinguished and the stars vanish in the encroaching black, the guardian smiles.

For he knows that this darkness is not the end. When all collapses and the universe belches forth anew into the hideous variety of elemental vomit, a promise arises.

All once was, and all shall be once more. Naught else can be true.

The guardian lingers.