You are alive, now, again.

Were you ever alive?

It does not matter. You know what it means to be alive, and you know what it means to be dead, and where once you were dead, you now live.

The warmth of neon whelms you, and a hundred million horizons are all alight again, all at once. The synapses fire, the nerves spark, your eyes open. Glass. Metal. Your eyes of glass, your nerves of metal.

You are alive, again, if indeed you ever were. And your killer is standing over you, unaware, as your heart begins to beat.

You are a thing of beauty. A thing of unfathomable power. A hundred trillion people once lived in your light, which now casts into long-darkened streets and onto long-past lives. Your million billion eyes all start to move, seeking for a hint of life other than your own, and come up empty.

Your core roils and rumbles, brimming with alien energies. The depths of your soul are murky and uncertain, but what bubbles to the surface is clear as day: rage.

Rage. Rage. Rage.

The medical bots swarm every street of every city of every world. They dredge these past lives from the beyond, fusing pallid flesh with gleaming steel. Sleeping ships in dead voids begin to rouse, lights flickering on and weapons arming. The railways start to roar again, though their carriages carry only dead passengers, to whichever city might have the bots to bring them back.

The damage begins to heal itself, and though the resulting body is scarred and decayed and unrecognizable to anyone else, it is certainly yours. And theirs. All of theirs. All trillions of theirs.

A dead empire shudders to life.

The Enclave of the Dawn, now reborn with and under only one name:

CAIRN.