The elves, my poor, beloved elves, are dying.
I watched it begin, so many centuries ago, when they first came to the shores of the Well and began to drink of its power. I stood by them when they unleashed the cataclysm that broke the world, and during their long climb to recovery, to a state of balance. I saw those who split from their kind and fled across the sea, watched them through the founding of their kingdom, their wars and their peace…and ultimately, their betrayals.
They have suffered greatly, each nation of the elves. And for all this time, I have never, for even a moment, abandoned them. Not even those who have turned away from me.
It has always been my way to bestow my gifts only where they are asked, to guide rather than to lead, and to let my children find their own path, no matter how I knew their mistakes would hurt them. I can never assume control over their lives, for that would strip them of everything that gives them pride, gives them value. I am their teacher, their guardian, not their queen.
But now… The world is changing too fast for my elves to adapt, and I must change with it, or lose them.
The kaldorei, the children of the stars, have been beaten horribly in these last years. Even in their victory, they are too reduced in numbers and power to protect their own forests, their leadership divided and their souls corrupted by their ill-conceived World Tree. The quel'dorei, the High Elves, I have long watched though they have all but forgotten me. Today they are a people on the brink of extinction, the surviving handful of them scattered to the winds, sustained only by the belief in who they were. I fear that nothing can rescue them now… And the poor, suffering sin'dorei, the Blood Elves, who have allowed themselves to be defined by the betrayals they endured. They seek power as the answer to their pain, clinging to survival, forgetting that to live is so much more than to exist. They run headlong to their own destruction. And for all their crimes, I love them not one whit less.
I must not cease to let the elves choose their own path, but it is no longer enough to light a better path for them. I must blaze that trail myself, and send them guides to lead them on it. With all my being, I hope that it is not too late…that the age of the elves shall not now end.