Esyllt’s voice calls into the night, awakening hopes and fears, memories and dreams; awakening an ancient rite’s power within the gathered clan. “Join now, in a song of promise. A song of binding, hearth and soul; of oath’s dire weight and freedom’s hard chains. Join now as we bring forth four warriors into our midst. Proven and true. Alive by Duty. Pledged to Oath. Bound within Promise.

Remember now our time-dimmed past.

How sworn to our Duty and course through Oath and blood.

Leaving all behind, our lives foresworn.

Into Time we fought.

Beyond Time we won the way.

The Way we closed, with blood and lives it was sealed.

With Oath it is warded.

Through our fight will our world be healed.

We are the Aestrâgor.

With Dael we chose.

With Dael we fought.

With Dael we died.

With Dael we stand.

With Dael we shall return,

When Time turns and ages pass.

We wait,

We honor,

Dael’s Choice.

We Aestrâgor.

As the last vowel sweeps high over the gathering, to settle deep and deeper within each heart beating; as the last whispered note flies free, its echo long remembered within each soul’s shadowed way; as the now of time again takes hold and breaths are spilt while hearts quicken, Esyllt lowers her arms, her song’s power vested.

I blink, again and again until my eyes finally open. Everything is blurred, as if seen under a red-lit sunset. Around me my companions still kneel. Beyond my vision are gathered my gwely and my caer, my family and clan. I feel their thoughts, their hopes and burdens, their steadfast love and promise. I feel our bond as never before. Alive. A chord reaching through each of us, into our past, to our first shaken stride upon this world. And beyond, through time itself, to Cymru, world of our hearts.

Ah, here is Esyllt, with her dark ink to paint my face. To press deep within my wounds. To blacken my skin. And scald my soul, they say.

The High Singer hands the stone bowl back to Hywel. Before her, all four warriors remain kneeling. Their faces no longer bleed. Where once the flesh showed raw and red, now it blazons with black shapes to mask the eye. Each warrior shakes with the violence of their pain, but none so much as moves a willful muscle. The pain will lessen, fade into proud memory, find new wounds to sharpen. But the honor, the oath and duty, now here are things to carry one into death.