A shroud of sickly mist curled through the ruins of Ebongrave, once a proud city, now nothing more than a festering wound in the land. The dead did not rest here—they lingered, whispering in agony, bound by the will of a queen whose reign had only begun.
Selene Nocturna stood upon the remains of the city's great altar, her cloak billowing like blackened wings. In her pale fingers, she held a vial of sanguine ichor, the last trace of a dying priesthood. She uncorked it, allowing the thick crimson to trickle onto the defiled stones. The ground beneath her trembled, drinking the sacrifice with insatiable hunger.
"Let mourning give rise to dominion," she intoned, her voice resonating with unnatural weight.
The silence that followed was absolute. Then—a keening wail erupted from the fissures of the land.
The wraiths had come.
From the depths of the shattered temple, the Veilborn Wraiths drifted forth, their translucent forms twisting between the remnants of the once-sacred halls. Their voices wove a chorus of sorrow—an eternal funeral hymn for a world that had not yet died.
Selene welcomed them.
"Sing for me," she commanded, her voice both tender and cruel.
Their lamentation became a force—a dirge so powerful that it bent reality itself. The air thickened with decay, the ruins of Ebongrave crumbling further beneath the weight of their grief. Where once there was nothing, now there were phantoms, pulled from the fabric of forgotten memories.
Selene stepped forward, arms outstretched. "Rise, my beloved wretched. It is time to weep no more."
In the outskirts of Ebongrave, a band of weary survivors clung to the last vestiges of hope. Their leader, Captain Aldric Vayne, a veteran of a dozen battles against the unnatural, gritted his teeth as the first echoes of the wraithsong reached them.
"She's begun," one of them whispered. "The Widow sings."
Aldric tightened his grip on his sword. He had fought against Selene's horrors before. He had seen entire villages collapse beneath her plagues, watched friends fall only to rise again as mockeries of life.
But this? This was something worse.
"We need to move," he ordered. "Now. If the dead are singing, then the Pale Widow is listening."
As they turned to flee, the fog thickened. A shadow loomed ahead—a figure wrapped in a veil of mourning silk, her face half-concealed beneath a hood.
But something born of her sorrow.
A wraith turned flesh.
It lifted a skeletal hand. The dirge grew louder.
And the first of Aldric's men dropped to their knees, clutching their heads—sobbing, screaming, breaking.
The lament had reached them.
And death would follow soon after.