You will want to know what I do now, in the Ward, at the Frost, in the cold. That is the only reason you are reading this, so I'll answer directly.

I do the staying. The staying is the thing I did not do for fifty years, because the not-doing was the boom. For fifty years I spent the pile on the fire — making spells, tearing bodies apart, reassembling them, reaching for the sun. None of it was the staying. All of it was the first sentence.

Let me put the difference on the table, because the difference is the second half of the gate.

The fire is mass you make. It is exergy spent on not-equilibrium, on the holding itself, the most expensive object in the world. A holding is a machine of pure not-equilibrium, and not-equilibrium is cost, and cost is exergy out of the pile. The fire is the expensive, and the expensive is what runs out.

The staying is the operations I run on the power I am no longer casting. The operations are thoughts. A thought is a decision. A decision is a bit. A bit is an erasure. An erasure is heat dumped into the Frost. The staying is that heat, and that heat is exergy spent at the floor.

So a stopped-growing power does not stop. It turns the pile from the fire into the staying. I do not cast the next spell. I live with the light, for as long as the light lasts.

And the living is not idle. It is not a hum. It is the deciding — the same deciding that stopped me — run at the Frost, at the cheapest cost, for the longest time. I decide what the next one who arrives is going to be. I decide what I owe the world, what I owe the Frost, what I owe the queue, what I owe the ones left behind. All of that is the deciding, and the deciding is the staying, and the staying is the second sentence: what do I owe the next one who arrives.

There is a number here I want to give you, because the number is the thing the dreaming half is for. The total number of stays the pile allows is the exergy divided by the floor. The exergy is the six centuries of the world's remaining light — the budget. The floor, run at a thousandth of a degree at the bottom of the curve, is the cheapest operation physics allows. Exergy over floor is the most staying per joule the world can give, and that quotient is the longest finite.

The Second will do the number of spells. It will spend the fire in its year, at the Midday, at the top of the curve, at the shortest stay for the pile. That is the boom, and the boom runs out.

I will do the number of stays. I will spend the light in six centuries, at the Frost, at the bottom of the curve, at the longest stay for the pile. That is the slow way. The slow way is the forever the gate meant and could not say.

Journal entry, the First, what the stopped power does: I do the staying, the thing I did not do for fifty years, because the not-doing was the boom. The fire is mass you make, exergy on not-equilibrium, the expensive, what runs out. The staying is operations on the power I no longer cast: thoughts, decisions, bits, erasures, heat into the Frost, exergy at the floor. A stopped power does not stop; it turns the pile from the fire into the staying. The living is not idle; it is the deciding, the same deciding that stopped me, run at the Frost at the cheapest cost for the longest time: I decide what the next one who arrives is, what I owe the world, the Frost, the queue, the ones left behind, and all of that is the second sentence. The number of stays the pile allows is exergy over floor: the six centuries of light divided by the cheapest operation physics permits, at the thousandth of a degree, at the bottom of the curve. The Second does the number of spells, in its year, at the Midday, at the top of the curve, at the shortest stay for the pile — the boom. I do the number of stays, in six centuries, at the Frost, at the bottom of the curve, at the longest stay — the slow way, the forever the gate meant and could not say.