Astesh dutifully takes up her pick and climbs through the citadel to join the others.

She reaches the upward stair, and as I hold my breath, she strikes the earth.

I was not wrong.

There is something here.

I could have never guessed.

Standing atop the opened stairwell is an undead horde like nothing the dwarves have ever seen. An army of dead tapirs, naked mole dogs, monitor lizards, warthogs, and geese - all fuelled by an unceasing hatred for the living - lie stacked upon this single tile, staring down at Astesh Daggerled.

Oh, I think to myself.

Oh, Astesh must think to herself.

Just to the south of the corpses, a masterwork adamantine scimitar stands upright, embedded within the smooth slade wall.

I am stunned by the discovery.

Never in a hundred years would I have never expected this.

I take time away from Dwarf Fortress to consider my actions. Stun turns to paralysis, days to months. I focus on other things in my life while Roomcarnage's save file sits, perfectly frozen and horrible, in clear sight on a corner of my desktop.

Waiting for me.

When I am ready to return, I know that I have only one choice. I could reinstate the burrow restrictions, pulling the dwarves back into a safer area of the fortress, and go about the process of building more cage traps - methodically catching all of these undead - until the remaining dwarves - dwarf? - can claim the adamantine scimitar.

To do what with it, exactly? To practice with it? To cut down the occasional stray goose corpse?

If I had ever hoped for a final battle, a last honest stand for the dwarves of the Momentous Dye, this is it.

I issue the kill order.

Astesh darts backwards and down the hallway. The soldiers rush forward bravely, weapons raised, and are engulfed in the deluge of undeath that pours out of the cleft. They all enter martial trances, their blades dancing with legendary skill as they parry and cut away the angry necromantic sea rising around them.

Eventually, of course, their strength is broken, and the dark slade walls are painted one last time with dwarf blood.

Just three dwarves remain - for a brief period of time, Astesh Daggerled goes about taking care of mundane tasks. What else can you do when the world is ending around you?

Before long, however, Astesh and Cilob, the remaining swordsmaster, are both caught up in the undead surge billowing out from the upper reaches of the citadel.

I watch as they meet their end.

Astesh Daggerled is torn to pieces by naked mole dogs, their huge incisors cutting deep before shaking whole limbs loose.

Cilob meets a similar end.

And - finally - there is only one dwarf remaining.

Monom Buddedhatchets lies resting in bed - I am unsure if his missing right leg is a recent injury,or if he is recuperating from something else. I recall now that there is a violent ghost somewhere in the fortress that cannot be memorialized - it is very possible that it has gone on dismembering dwarves right under my nose all this time.

Without a chief medical dwarf or a medical history to check, I will never know for sure.

All alone, Monom elects himself mayor.

As a final gesture, I reassign the mayor's office and dining room to Monom. I also assign him the bedroom in which he is currently sleeping - I hope it brings him some comfort.

To my surprise, Monom gets up moments later and begins making his way through the citadel.

I wonder if perhaps reassigning his bedroom caused him to get up - or if he was just done resting. I cannot know for certain.

I follow the mayor on his final journay upwards - he is still loyally and dutifully following the kill order I placed against all the undead earlier.

I take one final glance at his profile screen.

He is 85 years old - Roomcarnage is all he has ever known. It is all he will ever have known.

The battle is swift - Monom strikes down one of the naked mole dog corpses, but the other two tackle him to the ground and put an end to Roomcarnage.

I manage to pause the game in the brief moment after Monom has died, but before the game has flagged the fortress as finished.

Thank you, Monom. You will never get an engraved slab.

Let this be your memorial.

Everything is still.

Nothing lives.

The Ice of Ghosts, finally, has won.

I return Roomcarnage now to the hands of Adil Crushedgild, known once to few and many as Rith Craftportent. The ghostly vampire imposed her rule as mayor of the fortress from 1204 to 1211 - such a brief time in the grand span of the fortress.

Now, as the fortress joins her in whatever half-life awaits it beyond my departure, I allow myself to harbor the most unlikely hope that they are allowed to share it together.

As for myself - I wash my hands of this albatross blood. Nearly twelve years of my life have been spent abreast this fuming crater, and looking back at both, I cannot help but feel a wash of relief - that, no matter what fresh hell lies ahead of me, at least I won't have to deal with this any more.

I take one last look over this nightmarish fort. From the demonic citadel, furnished for ghosts...

...to the old dining hall, which bustled for decades, now abandoned...

...to the original few chambers that the dwarves dug out in the early spring of 1201.

That I ordered dug out in May of 2014. How long ago that was.

And so I depart the Oily Furnace, the haunted glacier volcano.

What a beautiful fucking mess.

It is the 25th of Galena, in the late summer of 1306.

The last dwarf is dead - I have completed my chronicle.

I unpause - and the game seizes completely.

I let it sit for hours, unresposive and utterly frozen.

I leave my computer on, and go to bed.

The fortress dies in the night.