And through the city gates stumbled the squeamish silhouette of a particularly ragged and battered Nord. He held a queer envelope in his trembling hands, besmeared with unmentionable fluids, its surface already rippled from the moisture of his cold hands.
His crooked gait and broken countenance told of grievous affliction, accentuated by a deathly pallor, earning him queer looks of conspicuous disdain among the citizens. Unsettled by his obvious illness, the populace of this town with a harbour on the province's southern tip avoided him, giving him a wide berth as he carried himself over to the sinister mansion to his left with considerable difficulty.
His heavy and indubitably challenged breathing echoed amidst the general silence that ensued as all eyes followed his every step. Dragging his burning feet along the cobblestone road, he at last made it to the front door of the house with the withering garden. He managed to knock twice before his encumbered arm holding the letter sunk down again, powerless against the gravitational pull. The door creakingly opened and an old man met his tired gaze. An aged Imperial whom Yagir said to deliver the letter to. But before the Nord could hand over the parchment, he collapsed to the floor and expired.
The city guard and local priest were quick to carry the body away, giving it some last rites before burying it in the town's crypt under the chapel. In the following days, the recipient of the epistle that was so ghastly bestowed unto him familiarized himself with its contents. On the fifth day he sat at his table and read the final paragraphs with increasing uneasiness until he sprung up and ran to the chapel in a mad hurry.
Meanwhile, under the shrine of Dibella, in the hitherto undisturbed sepulchre, the foreboding lustre of alien crystals dispersed the darkness and engulfed the underground space in a gay splendour. But the pulchritudinous appearance deceived those who are enchanted by its beautiful scintillation. For the versicolor incandescence held secrets blacker than the void's emptiness.
As the old man made efforts to persuade the priest to see the burial chambers, the first coffin of many would slide open ever so silently. The dust particles were thrown into disarray when the lid dropped to the ground and sent the luminous shards flying in its wake. The wooden entombment creaked under the weight of the undead hand that seized its edge for leverage out of its grave.
And as the opalescent body rose, a scholar in the Five Claws Lodge in Leyawiin completed his alchemical concoction he so secretively brewed over many days. He administered it to himself and his garb thereafter and knew that he had only one choice to keep it from spreading. With a clear, albeit lugubrious, resolve, he reminisced for but a moment of all which had transpired. He realized that there was only one thing left to do.
And when his thoughts rested in somber remembrance of his friends that he had lost, he looked at his hand and lit the flame.
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