I am become circumstance, my Witness, the unseen whim of fate that shapes the lives of one score of infants in the same temper of luxury and hardship that honed my infallible edge. Where their families lack, I gift them with prosperity, opportunity, and the elimination of obstacles. Where they would know softness, I introduce suffering for which there is no salve, snatching away those who may carry them and nourish frailty. My salubrious hand imbues strength, but far more critically. It weans them on immaculateness. They are self-made, they tell themselves, and grow strong for their suffering—should not all their kind be so capable? Is there—they conclude—any explanation for the failure that permeates their society beyond a sick sentiment for weakness? Their antennules quiver at the debility in their kind. Its stink disgusts them. The youngest of my brood, I named him Uun, has taken his first life. Stoked on emotion, his craft is sloppy—the hand of a child—but I have removed the shoddy traces of his outburst and vanished those who might find fault with such a child. He shrinks now from the anonymous endowments I lay as laurels for his conquest. I have permitted too much softness for the offspring. And I am left to ponder—did you so attentively hone me into your blade, my Witness, or did happenstance and my own tenacity ready a blade for you to draw?