She knew she was dead. She had felt it. All throughout that night the stabbing pain and creeping coldness finally brought her into the endless dark. There she wandered with the others; some fading into the abyss, some calling for the light. Was this her soul? Destined to be caught in perpetual darkness until it engulfed it whole and then… a glimmer. A shard. Figures of light entered into the darkness, painfully bright.

She remembered who she was then – Verena. She had lived with death and regret. She had died in doubt and despair. Something drew her in, something familiar. Her boy. Her son. He had been caught between worlds. She followed the trail of his soul to an open gate flooded with light. The brilliance called out to her, and she answered.

She recalled something else then; someone else. She witnessed the boy’s memory of every experience he had lived. She felt quiet joy… extreme loss… fear and pain and loneliness. Arrin. She witnessed his sight of the man that had tortured him past feeling. She had to help him; save him. She raged. A curtain of black veiled everything, though she could still feel his blood flow, his quiet breath press on. He was still alive. Verena remembered how the Wraiths caught from the other world, the Ether, would be held within the cloaks of the order and turn into Shrouds. Somehow she would find a way to manifest herself in this plane… and save him.