“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

- Plato

He was a noble.

He was one of the first off the ship on the continent, their new home.

He was fleeing, fleeing the mountain falling on fair Allisair, tumbling through the air like a dandelion seed. The statues weeping blood and screaming their warnings while his mother refused to leave the ancestral hall. Fleeing his father, drinking the poison of the moon moth.

He was standing in a valley and he did not know, never would know, how he had come to be here. His head full of holes.

His sight was blinding white, like a mist illuminated by colorless flames.

He was holding a young man, his son, in his arms, blood running from a deep wound in his throat, and he did not know his name, did not know his own.

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His hand held the named sword, held a rusted ruin bathed in dark flame. He stood by her command, and the earth, death could not hold him. He would do his duty as he had in the past. Clods of grass clung to his decaying frame, mummified tendons creaked, frost flowed through him cold as the blade that had ended his life. Armor plates shifted ponderously. Previously darkened runes began to glow.

Marching to the siren song of life's pulse but forever denied its warmth, freezing without even the ability to shiver, to react, to do anything but follow her voice.

“When the archers attack, you will flank them from the south. Take care that they do not see you earlier than necessary. Kill everyone. Hunt survivors no more than half an hour, then return here.”

The others around him heard him relay the commands, spoken not with a mortal voice. They lifted their weapons of ancient bronze, of rusted iron, of clawed bone.

In the sight of his memories, he saw his men cheering him on as he strove to carve this land in his image and make it fit to live for his son, for humanity. His son was...

He was a commander, a noble, and he would do his duty.

The wight strode forth into the night-time woods, gripping an old bastard sword with unlight illuminating ancient runes. Following him were scores of skeletons and ghouls.

The frost elf necromancer leaned heavily on her staff and calmly watched, as a few grey hairs drifted past her pale face, falling to the forest floor. Expressionless as the dead she commanded.

For she had long since realized that to overcome death while still living, you have to pay with life.