Still they went South till they passed below the South and came to the Rim of the Worlds.
There there is neither South nor East nor West, but only North and Beyond; there is only North of it where lie the Worlds, and Beyond it where lies the Silence, and the Rim is a mass of rocks that were never used by the gods when They made the Worlds, and on it sat Trogool. Trogool is the Thing that is neither god nor beast, who neither howls nor breathes, only _It_ turns over the leaves of a great book, black and white, black and white for ever until THE END.
And all that is to be is written in the book is also all that was.
When _It_ turneth a black page it is night, and when _It_ turneth a white page it is day.
Because it is written that there are gods—there are the gods.
Also there is writing about thee and me until the page where our names no more are written.
Then as the prophet watched _It_, Trogool turned a page—a black one, and night was over, and day shone on the Worlds.
Trogool is the Thing that men in many countries have called by many names, _It_ is the Thing that sits behind the gods, whose book is the Scheme of Things.
But when Yadin saw that old remembered days were hidden away with the part that _It_ had turned, and knew that upon one whose name is writ no more the last page had turned for ever a thousand pages back. Then did he utter his prayer in the fact of Trogool who only turns the pages and never answers prayer. He prayed in the face of Trogool: “Only turn back thy pages to the name of one which is writ no more, and far away upon a place named Earth shall rise the prayers of a little people that acclaim the name of Trogool, for there is indeed far off a place called Earth where men shall pray to Trogool.”
Then spake Trogool who turns the pages and never answers prayer, and his voice was like the murmurs of the waste at night when echoes have been lost: “Though the whirlwind of the South should tug with his claws at a page that hath been turned yet shall he not be able to ever turn it back.”