SOME SAY WHEN WE LET OUR INNER BEAST TAKE OVER we allow our ancestors in. For those Elders still alive—or Slumbering—we allow them to see through our eyes, to feel through our touch. We honor them, but in doing so we become vulnerable to them, more than one tale told of an Everlasting unable to recover from the bloodlust of their ancestors that sang in their veins.

Most Keepers dismiss this as nonsense, but the Praedari live it, building elaborate rites around the idea of honoring one’s ancestors by embracing the predator within. Their Ritus Essendi, the Rite of Becoming, demonstrates the ultimate in submission to one’s ancestors: from the outside looking in, they succumb entirely to their bestial-self in a moment of desperation, scrambling to survive and, in doing so, proving themselves to their sect.

In truth, they channel the strength of their ancestors. The scramble to survive allows their Elders to move through them, to be one with the earth again, to relive their own Becoming and honor their own ancestors, and so forth. Even those that fail to climb from the dirt to be reborn experience this connection with their ancestors and serve the sect in doing so. Those Elders in the Slumber experience through them their own Becoming, something the Praedari believe vital to keeping them loyal to the sect even as the passage of time may have otherwise jaded them to the cause.

Politics aside, there’s beauty in this, that we may live again in those we created—that we may, in those we created, and in ourselves, summon those who’ve gone before. In this way we are never truly alone. In this way none of us ever truly dies. Our Final Moment becomes just another moment of many.