Is anyone there...? Can anyone hear...?

For whoever there might be, for whatever it's worth... if there's anything at all left of this place after they leave, if they end up leaving at all, not turning all into ashes... though perhaps, just perhaps, they will, they will leave, and our scattered remnants will return and repopulate... or perhaps, they will forever stay, do whatsoever they please in this realm of ours, like it is their own.

The year is... something around 6200. I can't tell you exactly, because I myself don't know; and what does it matter, anyway? Let's be true to ourselves for just a split second, we're not making it out of this. If you're reading this, actually reading, then you aren't human, you aren't sarlaan or an uimdar, or a chirr... you are somehing else, someone else, someone new, someone just discovering their own way in the galaxy. Someone planting their seeds, putting down the first of steps. You don't know us, just perhaps you do know of us, if you've found ruins or ashes of our pathetic existence.

If you have found this, and if you are at peace... it might just mean they aren't here anymore. As they appeared, so they departed.

You, whoever you might be... know that we, all the species of the galaxy banded together as one, we fought a cataclysmic war against those who swarmed our realms. We don't know anything about them, despite dedicated Research Bureaus operating for centuries... and yet, and yet, they evade all knowledge possible to be gained.

We've been fighting this war for three centuries now. Barely anyone remembers the world before it, and the one now...? It's hell, let's be honest... this war is so large it has engulfed all available resources from the entire galaxy, tranformed thousands of planets into complete, total battlefields for decades, killed tens of millions on each one, if not more. Star systems have been destroyed. We've built up mighty navies and tried to push them back in space, it didn't work, our offensives always stopped by their impenetrable war machine.

I'm now lying here, alone, under the ruins of what I presume is a fallen wall, and thinking... maybe I was chosen? How lucky is it that it's precisely me and this tablet here, a working one? Maybe something... higher... chose me to lead you, the New Ones, into a brighter future... even if just by retelling our tale, giving out warnings... even this brief.

I can't feel my legs, I think they might be gone.

Last I've heard, Defense Line Epsilon was holding, but... I don't know... in this hour of trial, I don't believe in victory anymore.

Let me die in peace. Fuck any mission I might've been chosen for. Fuck you all so thoroughly.

Let me just... go...

Please.

Colonel Stevenson Berkins of the Republican Marines 34th Battallion, signing off for the final time.