August the 25th, 1524

My Dearest Annette,

First, know that I miss you deeply and cannot wait to return to our London home. The comforts of a traveler remain few, and I long for the warmth of our bed. The dangers of the road are nothing to me, but you know that I have never taken to the life of a wanderer.

I hope you are comfortably seated before you begin reading, for this letter will be long, but its contents must be carefully examined. Much of what I have to say is for the entire Guild, but there is some – I will indicate when – that I write of only because I cannot hold such secrets alone. Once you have read what I speak of, you will think me a fool for entrusting such things to a messenger, even an Assassin, but I cannot hold my silence.

The Mentor is dead. He passed away quietly in the Florentine marketplace, not an hour before I arrived in the city in search of him. His wife and children were searching for masks as he sat upon a bench, resting. Sofia tells me that when they returned to him, they believed him to be asleep until the stillness of his chest caused them to realise otherwise. When I came upon them, Sofia was cradling her husband in her arms while the children sobbed quietly to one side. Their purchases were scattered on the ground; I suppose Sofia dropped them in shock.

I was loath to make my presence known under such circumstances, but in the end I approached them and introduced myself. Sofia, thankfully, remembered me; she was there when the Mentor named me Guild Master of London, after all. She asked for my help in bringing her husband home, and I was all too happy to oblige. A sympathetic bystander offered his horse, but I politely refused – I felt that it was my duty and honor to bear my Master, and I would not relinquish it for all the gold in the world.

As we walked, Sofia told me that it was perhaps fitting for him to have died in the city of his birth. For seventeen years he knew no other world but that of a young Florentine noble, a rival family his only notable worry. In the span of one day, his entire life changed – suddenly he was the last male of his bloodline, the sole defender of his mother and sister, and a fugitive from the law of his own city. A lesser man would have been broken by the challenge, but not our Mentor. Instead, he began a fight that would last the rest of his life, in the process rebuilding our Order stronger than it had ever been before.

As it so happened, I was not the only Guild Master in Florence. Dogan Bey, master of the Turkish Assassins, had come to the city with a number of Assassins, intending to lend his strength to the Italians in their war. The role of the Order in fighting for Pope Clement, however, would have to wait. Though it went against both our beliefs, Dogan and I agreed that the Mentor would have a funeral pyre atop the Campanile di Giotto – the highest point in Firenze. Even in death he would rise above the city like the guardian angel he always was. It was how he had paid his final respects to his father and brothers, and so we thought it only fitting to send him along to join them in the same manner.

We stood atop the tower that very night. There were eight of us there to bid farewell, eight of us to witness the last moments of his physical existence. Sofia and her two children were there, of course. Beside them stood Sofia's sister-in-law Claudia and Niccolò Machiavelli, both of them known Assassins in their own right. Gioan Basadona, the current Master of the Italian Assassins, was naturally present, clad in the Armour of Brutus entrusted to him when the Mentor stepped down almost twelve years ago. Dogan carried the Mentor's body to the pyre, and I held the torch that would send him on his way.

It was a moving sight. The children did not cry; perhaps they did not yet understand what was happening. Sofia's tears had dried, though Claudia still held onto her as though she would buckle at the knees. Machiavelli looked on with somber eyes, while Basadona bowed his head in respect. As I approached what would be our Mentor's final resting place, I could not help but recall the stories – the legends – I'd heard about him. In his youth he had scaled the very tower atop which we now stood. He had been forced to watch his father and brothers die not ten yards away, not knowing even then that he would spend the rest of his life hunting those responsible. It was he who laid low the Pazzi, defeated the Barbarigo, and fought his way into the heart of the Vatican City. He built the Roman Brotherhood almost from scratch, defeated Cesare Borgia and threw him from the walls of Viana Castle. Even in his later years, he saved Constantinople from the threat of a Templar army without the city's inhabitants ever knowing how much they owed him. How could such a man be anything but a mythical hero called forth to hearten the weary and spur on the downtrodden to greater heights?

I admit, my dearest, that my composure nearly failed as I touched the torch to the pyre and watched the flames grow until the white of the Mentor's robes was no longer visible behind the curtain of fire and smoke. When I felt I could hold back the tears no longer, I threw the torch into the flame and brought my left hand to my chest, fist clenched save for the ring finger in the salute that we were all taught. The others followed suit, and Machiavelli proclaimed, "Consummatum est. Requisecat in pace, Mentore." So we stood for what seemed like ages, until much of the pyre had burnt away.

We parted company shortly before dawn. Machiavelli and Claudia departed immediately for Rome, but Sofia asked Dogan and I to accompany her to the palazzo they maintained in the city. It was there that we learned of a secret our Mentor had protected for many years, a secret that could very well shake the foundations of the world.

My darling, it is from here on end that I must ask a vow of silence from you. What I have learned is too great, too dangerous for me to hold alone. It is not that I do not trust James or any of the others, but what little I am willing to speak of may well be enough to cause us a great deal of trouble.

Altaïr's library – the fabled repository of all the Assassins' knowledge built by the equally legendary Grand Master – was empty. When the Mentor opened it, he found no books, no scrolls filled with age-old secrets and traditions long since lost. Instead, he found the remains of Altaïr himself – and a secret greater than all those in the rest of the world.

Sofia admitted that her husband had kept many things hidden even until his death. What she did know, however, is that he learned of an ancient race that predated humanity itself – Those Who Came Before. Though advanced beyond our imagination, they caused their own downfall and left a ruined world to be repopulated by our kind. Their legacy lay in us – and in the artifacts they created to aid us in our own quest for survival.

There is a great vault beneath the Vatican that was built by Those Who Came Before, and within it was stored a message destined to be passed on throughout the ages to a man who may not be born for many years. Another vault lies beneath the Colosseum in Rome, and it is within these that the Mentor sealed two Apples from the mythical Garden of Eden. These Apples were apparently devices of great and unknowable power; Sofia said that her husband confessed to having been afraid of them even when he learned how to use them.

Within the Library of Altaïr was a third Apple, one that allowed our Mentor to somehow speak with this mysterious "Desmond". What he said and how, Sofia cannot say. What she did tell me is that through these Apples, the Mentor learned of a great catastrophe somewhere in the future. It will mirror the collapse of our predecessors, and it falls to us – the defenders of freedom and the free thought that makes man so great – to prevent it.

You may think me mad, and I cannot blame you. Though Dogan believed her immediately, I myself doubted Sofia's words until she presented me with one of the Keys to the Library. It was not a key of a kind I was familiar with, and I quickly learned that it was like nothing I had ever encountered. I cannot explain how, but it allowed me to look into the past through the very eyes of Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad himself.

The things I saw, Annette! I stood on the edge of Masyaf Castle, smelled the sea salt on the wind and heard the cries of battle as clearly as though I was there. Perhaps I was – somehow, I had become a man dead these last two hundred years. I spoke in his voice, fought with his arms and legs. Oh Annette, would that I could let you experience the same thing, if only so that you would know your husband has not gone mad.

I am setting out for London at first light. When I return to England, it will be with a renewed sense of purpose. I have always believed in our cause, but now that I know our importance in this fight spanning centuries – I swear, I shall never falter.

Even in death, it seems our Mentor is not finished teaching us. He has transcended mortality as only the truly great ever do, and through him I now know more than I ever thought I could. He is no longer a man.

The man named Ezio Auditore da Firenze is dead. He has gone to join his father and mother and brothers, God rest their souls. But the legend of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, il Mentore degli Assassini – the legend of that young Florentine who went on to knock down the Pope and rebuild an ancient Order, the legend of the warrior who liberated Rome and defended the freedom of Constantinople – the legend lives, Annette. The legend lives.

Always yours,

Robert