The Awoken were made in conflict, she reminded me. All her people volunteered to return from heaven to fight and die in the cosmic war. They are by nature and by doom drawn to that edge, that place of tension. And she has her own prejudices: she has made terrible, ruthless choices in the name of salvation from Darkness, so she cannot dismiss its power without in a way dismissing herself.

All that said, she told me, "I believe in balance. But to seek balance is not to seek equity. A sea half of water and half of poison is not in balance. A body half alive and half dead is not in balance. Given the choice to live in any world, any world at all… we would need a little Darkness in it, I think, to keep the balance true. But not so much as we would need the Light…

"What do you think, Eris Morn? When you went into that pit, your Light against the clawing Darkness, did you feel balance?"

No. I did not. I felt overwhelming, all-consuming evil.

I think a world of balance would fight the Darkness, because Darkness unchecked is Darkness thriving. I think that a world of balance would never mistake the excitement of transgression or the grim necessity of trespass for a genuinely righteous act. We must remember the value of unshakable, irrational hope. The choice to act as if we lived in a better world can create a place for that better world to exist.

Source: https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/trust-and-hope