The Protheans had failed, as all organics did. His mind returning to his true self, Harbinger sent out the signal, the light from his Galaxy dancing across his surface. They would awake, those who watched with him, and those that they guarded: the deepest sleepers of all. He felt the watchers waken, dark energy flickering through limb after limb, mind after mind rising into sentience. But it was the deep sleepers who responded to his signal, as they always had, voice after voice rising into a single harmony:
"We do not understand."
They never understood.
There were too few left now, too few who truly understood: the number whittled down as vanguard after vanguard was lost over the aeons, torn from them by a Harvest that was all too often defective. Too few, far too few, made it through the process without losing themselves, without their minds breaking before the horror of eternity. Others simply lost control as they aged, minds shattering and collapsing into a upheaval of cluttered voices. But even the broken gods would dream his dreams, would fight for the cause when the time came. He spoke out to the Watchers.
"The Harvest is spoiled: the passage is blocked. We must find another way."
The latest crop seemed... promising. Young enough to have maintained the required genetic diversity, yet blossoming in number, even after a premature collection had whittled some of them away. And one of theirs had already shown their value: a Vanguard and an infant, fallen into silence at the hands of a single race. A dissatisfying loss, but still: in rebirth, this one would remember. There would be more to lead the mad ones: more to protect his fold from the night.
"We do not understand."
Could they ever, broken shells? Would they ever know on how fine a knife edge their existence spun? On how few existed to guide the mindless, to prepare their arrival and sweeten the flock. On how even less than those who did not break were those who would do what must be done if life was to be preserved? On how few guarded them from extinction.
"Follow."
Lights broke out over their carapaces, a galaxy's worth of glow rupturing out behind him from minds that could never understand. He would lead, and they would follow, as they always did, Harvest after Harvest: never understanding, never comprehending, minds forever broken by the pain of their rebirth.
Sometimes he pitied them, the lost.