here at the end of the world

It was without meaning, she thought suddenly, the chanting and the spells. They lived all their lives in the shadow of world’s end; and her children [...] would be born to a worse age; and their children to the end of the world. They tried to live as if it were unimportant that the sea was eating away at the marsh and the quakes shaking the stones of the hold. They lived as if gold could buy them years as it bought them grain. They sought safety and warmth and comfort as if it would last, and saw nothing that was real.

— Well of Shiuan