Falthal wept. The blood of his beloved stained him. She had insisted. They both knew there was no choice. But that knowledge didn't lessen the pain. The body he carried was just a husk now. Her soul forever bound in the seal that closed the rip in the fabric of the cosmic sphere. Tears poured forth from his eyes and fell, mingling with her blood and raining down in a torrent that carved a chasm in the ground, etching the trail of his sorrow. Falthal walked deep into the desert sands. The sky above the slate gray backdrop of the Pre-Dawn where the faces of the twins Goma and Amog twinkled with tears of their own.

At long last Falthal stopped, looking long at the body of Suma, Queen of the Fae, Binder of Worlds, Stiller of Chaos, and the only love the Crafter had ever known. Finally he placed her on the ground, carefully wrapping her in coverings of sand and stone. And there beside her grave, he sat, silently weeping, mourning a loss deeper than any mortal could understand.

And there he sits to this day, with sand and stone wrappings of his own. But his tears still know no end. Where they fall they mingle with the blood of his love, staining the waters before they rush away to the west, reminding those who see the cascading red-hued river of the Sacrifice of Suma and the Eternal Pain of Falthal the Sorrowful.

(original story written by me. images created with the help of ChatGPT)