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[the page is spattered with dark, ruddish ink blots. The handwriting is dissimilar from the rest you've read.]
I have been given a solution. One I aim to pursue.
 
My companions claim I am losing myself. They are irrational, they cannot see what I see.
 
I have lost no pages, no paragraphs, no words. I am more full than I have ever been- in looking into the margins, my own margins have filled up with scrawlings, with notes, with understanding. Ink has spilled and spattered across my pages, blurring words, blurring paragraphs, but the words are still there, beneath the ink.
 
I have lost nothing. I am more complete than ever, pages packed with more understanding than theirs will ever hold.
 
Oleander, the fool that he is, implies with his barbed “concerns” that I of all people am losing myself. Him, of all my companions, dares to make that accusation? Ludicrous. I’ve seen his pages. Sparse, artsy poetry that abuses the span of each page, leaving imbecilic amounts of negative space to pacing out what it does say. If anything, Oleander is the least complete of us. He should be the one being accused of being lesser. Of losing things.
 
The impermanence of my body plagues my every waking thought. What I’ve seen when I’ve looked into the margins has made me realize not only how infinitesimally small I am, but how fragile and quick to rot my flesh and bone are.
 
I have brought this concern to the attention of the most empathetic and understanding of us, and she claims I have only lived half of my life span and that I should not worry. She fails to comprehend how brutally short that half I have left is. It’s the blink of an eye, in the grand scheme of things. It’s impermanent. And if I am impermanent, my knowledge is impermanent. My power is impermanent! No efforts I make to pass it on to a pupil will be worth anything at all - their body would rot too, much as mine does!
 
My fragile body itself perhaps understands this fact. My blood has begun to run black, but I still feel the agony of bleeding. Patches of my flesh grow suitable for removal, but no less arduous to tear from my body.. This is the solution.
 
Power demands responsibility, and responsibility demands sacrifice.