A/N: These really aren't spoilers, as they are waaay beyond anything I ever plan to write up. The story is done. The rest comes out in the final parts of my ME3 piece, at which time you will look back at this story and put two and two together in horror.

The throne was oversized, bigger than life, and intricately styled, made of pieces of burned, shattered black metal with an oily sheen, bent and forced into the elegant shape of the seat. Hanging atop the apex of the throne was a pair of bracelets, hammered gold with faded colored cords set into them.

The throne was occupied by a carefully carved statue of flawless execution, done in black marble streaked with faint smears of red here and there. The figure was a female human, her face hard planes and a narrow, grim mouth, cold eyes staring out at some unseen threat, lounging back indolently. Her form was obscured by carved robes over thick slabs of armor. One hand held a silver glowing sphere, radiating a faint luminance, the other was resting atop the pommel of a real, battered asari warp-sword. Harshly cut runes ran down the length of the ancient but still sharp blade, reading out a single, holy, horrible title.

The Butcher.

The statue's brow was obscured by a slender circlet of hammered gold, inset with a gleaming orb of pure eezo that shone brightly, casting deep shadows in the eye sockets of the statue. At the statue's blocky, armored feet a thousand candles gleamed in a dizzying array of colors, along with scattered data-chips and several archaic weapons.

The throne and the statue were mounted on a dais, set in the middle of the Eternal Memory Park upon the Presidium of the Citadel. Four soldiers guarded each cardinal point of the square it was located in – humari, turian, yagh, and vlind. The inscription on the base was in the same hard runic lettering as the inscription on the sword.

"For when we did not heed, She bled, and for when we did despair, She led."

Two recent arrivals upon the Citadel observed the statue. The leftmost was a h'vantha, one of the newest races to join the Eternal Council. The heavy bulk of the creature emphasized the four heavily muscled arms ending in powerful hands, the almost sunken eyes in the ball-like head mounted on powerful quadricular shoulders. Hunched over in the ceremonial robes he wore, the light silver fur on the h'vantha's face quivered as it took in the statue.

Next to him, the elegant pictasi was a contrast. Elongated limbs – three legs, and three arms – set off the creatures barrel-like torso, while the head was merely a mass of slowly waving sensory stalks and a thin slash of a feeding tube. The pictasi's bright red skin shimmered to a darker hue as she also took in the sight, before giving a bleat and half shifting her stalks towards the h'vantha.

"So this the Shepard. Grim looking creature, isn't it?"

One of the h'vantha's heavy limbs stroked the long beard-tails below his mouth. "Indeed it is, Ugrha. Ugly as sin, and almost barbaric. So many legends surround it now, and very few know the truth."

Urgha, the pictasi, gave a shimmer of color. "Can one define truth across a gulf of so many years? There aren't even any more asari or humans, they became one race over three thousand years gone. Of the many who saw this … woman … alive, the only race still around are the turians, and even they have no doubt changed, Seven-Blue."

Seven-Blue flexed its shoulders. "Turians, peh. Doddering relics. They were more interesting in the old histories, warriors. Now they're just philosophers and mystics, the supposed Guardians of what can and can't be used of the Forbidden. Their perspective on the Shepard is clear enough since they basically think she's a god."

Urgha made a wide gesture with her limbs. "What perspective would be better, then? That of the Yahg?"

Seven-Blue turned away from the statue ponderously. "Couldn't hurt to listen to their wisdom, once in a while. You dislike them for violence, while we see them as admirable in their appreciation for reality."

Ugrha gave a warble. "Well, I have my doubts about wisdom such as theirs. Anyway, why all the bleating and braying? Some kind of announcement, I understand, to be held here?"

Seven-Blue gestured to the throne. "The Last of the Messages. Supposedly we're due for the final one today, very soon, that's why the Councils of the Five Galaxies are all here. I'm not sure what we'll learn from it, the last one was two hours long and explained the principles of the personal farstep. This is bound to have even more important information."

Urgha rolled her limbs. "Or be completely incomprehensible. I mean, have you talked to the humari? They're just completely strange. And this woman was the precursor of the union of asari and humans, from over fifteen thousand years ago. That's a big gulf in understanding."

Seven-Blue opened his mouth to reply when the shimmering silver sphere in the statue's hand began to flare with pure white light. The two aliens stopped, even as the turian honor guard tapped his quantum access band and spoke several words.

With a flash of the Forbidden Energy, two black-robed Godtalkers appeared. One was clearly turian, the other appeared to be a quar-geth. The cyborg and the turian slowly approached the statue, the cyborg speaking first.

"Has the time come at last, faithful Vigil, for the Last Message?"

The sphere quivered. "Yes, finally. Gather whatever pack of primitives you people have running this place now and have them assemble here. I am far too old and tired to go floating all over this oversized station just to spout more of Shepard's warnings that you idiots will ignore. Again."

The two Godtalkers glanced at each other, then the turian bowed and vanished in a flare of dark energy. The quar-geth stepped back slightly, turning to the two Councilors. "You should remain, gentle-beings. Shepard-Commander's message will be heard here, it appears."

Urgha gave a slurp. "Highly convenient."

Seven-Blue snorted. "There's a reason I asked you to come look at the statue, you know. Saved you being blasted through the air by a Godtalker. That crap always gives me the bumblies."

After a few moments, several more flares of light appeared – more Godtalkers, accompanied by over two dozen Councilors and a few other functionaries. They spread out in a semicircle around the statue and the still glowing orb in the statue's outstretched palm, while more Godtalkers flared with biotic radiance, sealing the square off from public vision and cutting off outside interference.

The head Godtalker, a powerful looking Yahg, bowed deeply to the sphere. "Faithful Vigil, we stand ready to hear the Message. We have heeded your Words all these years, and hunger for the final wisdom and enlightenment from She Who Saved Us."

The sphere pulsed even more brightly, emitting a light that none could bear to look on for more than a second. Its voice sounded smug and somehow amused. "She would slap each one of you dead if she knew you worshiped her. The irony is almost too much to bear. Hear, then, and behold."

When the light faded, the sphere had expanded into a curtain of silvery fluid, which slowly morphed into a humanoid shape. Finer details etched themselves into liquid surface, even as color bled into the stuff, and a moment later something none had seen in millennia stood there.

The human woman bore faint resemblance to her statue, being clearly much older. Fine wrinkles marred the high cheekbones, the hard shapes of some kind of cyberware visible against otherwise sagging skin at the throat and temple. The hair was longer and pure white, the posture more hunched and frail. The figure wore a simple set of plain gray clothes – long pants and a shirt – with the faint aura of some kind of informal uniform, with a single starburst on the high collar.

Her voice was cool and tired, almost dispassionate. "This is my final message, assuming you idiots haven't gone and gotten yourselves killed or worse by this point, or that Vigil doesn't get fed up with acting as my messenger pigeon into the future."

She adjusted her stance, folding her arms and letting her weight fall back onto one hip. "If you have forgotten me, I am Sara Shepard. What I was in life is unimportant. The past is nothing but what can't be changed – dwelling on it won't get you anywhere. This message is for the future, and concerns your own futures."

She smirked, the thin lips bloodless. "If Vigil hasn't gone off his timer, this should be some fifteen thousand years after we defeated the Reapers. At the destruction of that threat, I came face to face with what you guys will probably be calling a higher-order being calling itself the Darkness."

Nods and other gestures of affirmation filled the circle. The races of the galaxy had retained records of these beings, but neither they nor the Leviathans had ever been seen again. When the restrictions on research into the Forbidden had finally been lifted, many expected their return, but none ever arrived.

The figure of Shepard gave a rattling exhalation of breath. "At that first meeting, I didn't really understand the Darkness. It was over a hundred years later that they contacted me a second time, pretty much out of the blue. At that second meeting, the Darkness told me something huge. It was something so fucking beyond my puny brain's ability to comprehend that at the time it just didn't even register. It is something I never revealed to the races of my own time, or in any of the previous messages I have left."

She began to slowly pace, her aged form bent but still motive. "The previous Messages were based on discussions I had with certain Powers. About how to develop and understand the crazy that the Leviathans called Godpower. The people of my time were too primitive and evil to be allowed to use it. I had defenses created to limit its use until we all – galactic culture – evolved to a more enlightened state."

She gave a smile, and a slight sparkle came into her gaze. "If I'm not talking to an empty room, here, then that means you guys have survived the dangerous path without falling off and turning the entire universe into a pretzel or a pocket of hot gasses. It means you've moved beyond the kind of crap we were pulling on each other back in my day."

She exhaled again. "It means, I guess, that you're finally ready for the Truth."

The recreation of Shepard turned to face front, folding her hands behind her back. "The Darkness was more open with me in that second meeting. They told me a lot of crap – much of which doesn't matter, or that frankly you'll never be ready to hear. The important thing I learned is that they came here because the alterations of phase-reality being done by the Leviathans made 'ripples' that disrupted and destroyed their own society. The energy has to come from somewhere. If it doesn't come from this reality, it comes from another one. There ain't no free lunch."

"The Darkness came here to try to stop whatever was causing the ripples, before it destroyed them all. And it took a long time to destroy the Leviathan culture. By the time they got done, when they tried to go back home, they found that they couldn't."

She gave a thin smile. "The door was there, but it didn't go anywhere. So they sat here, crushing whatever generated more waves, trying to figure a way back home. Everything they studied and did was for that purpose."

She exhaled. "By the time the Reapers got into the whole eat-galaxies business behind their little shield of you-can't-see-me, the Darkness figured out that the way home wasn't gone so much as blocked from the other side. Something had sealed it shut. There were other … paths … to different realities, but each one was just as bizarre to them as our reality... and most of them were dead."

She looked up, staring past faces she couldn't see. "Many of these dead realms were just shreds of dark energy and matter, smeared about, and dead galaxies. Each one had what they called the smell of our own, a place where the fundamental constants of the laws of physics had been altered."

"Something had smashed in the doors and pretty much eaten everything. Except none of these places had alterations as severe as ours. Almost all of them were minor. This disturbed them a lot."

Shepard bit her lip. "After they helped us crush the Reapers, and had a really stern talk with the Leviathans, they had some time to go exploring again. And after a short amount of time doing so, they finally found a reality that seemed like their own, and wasn't a wreck already. They investigated, and found another link to their … home reality, I guess. When they opened it, something started trying to come through."

She shuddered. "They told me there, at the end, that whatever was trying to come through wasn't a … thing like them, or like us. They called it hands, or maybe fingers, of something else, something as far above them as they were beyond us. They said it was from Outside, whatever the fuck that meant."

The image pinched the bridge of its nose. Silence radiated from the square as the various Councilors waited for her next words. When she finally spoke, it was with confused resignation.

"They said that whatever it was couldn't be stopped, that the only way to not stir it up was not to come to it's attention. They said they pretty much wrecked that entire reality to seal the way behind them, to shut off any chance of it following. And when they did this, they realized something had probably hit their home, and destroyed it."

"They made me swear to ensure the races of this reality didn't do anything that would attract this Outsider's attention. And then they left, blowing open a hole to somewhere else and basically running."

A silence fell, for long seconds, as Shepard's image slowly shook its head. "A good fifty years later, I caught up with the Leviathans, and asked them what the shit the Darkness was going on about. I repeated its words to them and they basically took my head open to see for themselves. When I came to, they were fucking gone. They left me a little message, though."

She sighed. "The Leviathans understood what the Darkness was talking about. They put pieces together that I still don't understand. The long and short is this: something went horribly wrong somewhere. Phase alterations should not be possible. Eezo should simply not exist. Dark matter and dark energy should never have been."

Hard blue eyes swept outwards, staring past them at something horrid. "The Leviathans said all of these things had the feel of something manufactured. Something injected from what they called Below. In short, the shit was bait. They said they had been troubled ever since they saw something that the Reapers were doing, and that once they heard what the Darkness said, they figured it all out. They understood why things had gone the way they had."

She folded her arms. "They said that once you fiddled with the constants of reality, something was knocked askew. That doors were unlatched and couldn't be closed. The last thing the message told me was that even knowing about this Outsider – or how it worked – was dangerous, and that no matter what happened, I had to make sure we didn't do anything to get its attention."

She smiled. "And then, just like the Darkness, they took the fuck off to God knows where. They said this space was tainted, and that the Outsider would eventually come."

Shepard closed her eyes. "I used the threat of the return of the Darkness to spur inhibitions on research into the Forbidden, drew up a big fancy ass story with lots of reasons why it was bad. Every Message I stuck in Vigil before this was laced with things to steer you in different directions. After fifteen thousand years, though., things have moved beyond what I can even dream of predicting."

She opened her eyes. "I started these Messages three days ago, just after I put in the last programs for the Crucible – yes, it exists – to run upon my death. It will keep drawing on extant dark energy to reinforce the 'borders' of our reality, and to make sure nothing within our reality can open a breach. To do that, all the other restrictions had to come off. So the Messages were there to guide you along, down a line that would steer you away from trying to punch holes in the reality."

She gave a sad smile. "Last night, the Crucible's incoming data feeds showed something was trying to get in. Had been for a while. My best guess is it –whatever the fuck it is – found and ate either the Darkness or the Leviathans and tried to follow them back here. Right now, the Crucible's reinforcement is holding strong. I don't know how long that will last. Best guess is … around twenty thousand years, give or take a few hundred."

She folded her arms. "Probably not the words of wisdom you were looking for, I know. I've concealed this truth because I talked to a salarian Wheel Priest, trying to get an idea of what I should do. From what the poor bastard could see before he lost his mind and blew out his brains, divulging this information any earlier would lead to … bad places. Doing it later wouldn't give you the time needed to react. I had to do it now, at a point where you are advanced enough to make changes and choices, but still not messing about with the highest level shit."

"Merely stopping using the Forbidden won't do anything. Nor will running away. Included in this broadcast message are plans for the Crucible. Build more. Set them to the designations included in the design plans. Turn every bit of knowledge you have to sealing and hardening the barriers leading out of this reality, and if that means curtailing what you use the Forbidden for, then do that."

She gave a final, sad smile. "In the end, it turns out you don't get a happy ending. I've lived way longer than any human should, and I've outlived asari at this point. I'm fucking tired. I'm going home, curl up with my wife, and probably not wake up. I've done everything I could to try and give everyone more time, but there's no magical answers to this one."

She swept her eyes around the plaza, meeting eyes and sensory organs. "Don't make the mistake people did in my time. Don't hide this. Don't pretend it's not a threat. Don't fucking ignore my warnings. Given that you are the Council, which is a byword for 'blind and stupid', I doubt you'll actually listen to me, but the happy part about sending messages into the future is that I will be safely dead by the time this shit blows up. So at least if you fuck this one up, you won't get me and mine killed."

The figure stood straight and tall for a moment, grimacing in obvious effort and pain. "And that's all of that. I hope that whoever watches this lives in a time of peace and exploration, of joy and life. I'm sorry to darken your hope and futures with this, but you are grown-ups now, not the squabbling children of my time. I don't know if there will be a way to stop whatever is trying to get in, but I have faith that you made it this far, and you will do a way better job than I did."

"And now, I have a nap to take. Vigil, transmit the final files, and turn out the lights when you go, old buddy."

The image of Shepard shattered into silvery fluid and mist, slowly re-coalescing into the silvery ball of Vigil. "The plans and information Shepard wanted you to have has been burst transmitted to your barely competent informational devices. I would strongly advise you take her words and heed them well."

The lead Godtalker found his voice. "Of course, honored Vigil. But we have many questions..."

Vigil pulsed once more, its voice somber and yet amused. "Of course you do. And yet, I think, you still fail to understand her final words. Your path is yours to make, now. The humans were often ignorant, brutish things, more apt to brain something than use their brains, but they had a quote that comes to mind at this point. 'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven.' "

The Godtalker glanced at his fellows, and the Councilors, before nodding slowly. "It sounds... poetic."

There was a long pause. "It was from one of their superstitious religious books. And yet, perhaps it was the best book their kind ever wrote, for the chapter on wisdom alone. The time has been accomplished, and the purpose has been met. This system is going down. Farewell, primitives."

The sphere hovered a moment longer, then slowly lost it's radiance, sinking down to rest carefully on the hand of Shepard's statue before going altogether dark, becoming nothing more than a mirror-finished orb.

Aghast at the words and the loss of Vigil, the AI that had spoken for millennia, Seven-Blue turned to Urgha, a note of horror in his voice. "Now what?"