She lie on the ground, brunette hair fanned out around her, black cloak torn and marred. Silver moonlight filtered through the pine trees and cast itself on drops of dew.

Castellé couldn't say how long, for certain, that she'd been lying there, lips parted, gazing it the stars.

But it certainly wasn't, and would never truly be long enough.

The takeover was fast coming.

No one could stop it now. It had been long in the making.

All there was left to do was lay and wait for her time to come too. Just like those whom had gone before her.

Just like those already claimed by The Mystings.

They were a soulless bunch. Shrouded in robes of pure onyx that fluttered like silk in the wind, they were elegant...stunning, yet horrifying all at once. The Mystings had no faces...not ones of their own anyhow. They'd simply adapt the faces of animals and switch it up every day.


They had once been the sole inhabited of the Kingdom of Xyper. The only beings that roamed the vast woodland.

And soon they will be so again.

Man would fall first.

And soon after would fall dragon and griffin, elf and phoenix.

Every being except the Mystings.

As far as Castellé knew, she was the last of her kind. In just the first day alone she'd seen castles collapse and empires fall.

She'd seen the crops in flames and the souls of man as the Mystings claimed them as their own...adding anew faces to their collection.

What a horrifying sight it was; to see a face twisted in such a grim and grotesque way as they watched their own soul exit their body--before they'd even left the world of the alive. To see it come out--drawn to a pearl covered hand--as a silvery trail of shining air.

Castellé longed to be one of those whom had already come to pass. At least they weren't alone when they died.
At least they didn't know what was going to happen...

Honestly Castellé didn't long to live either. She'd lost too much.

How do you stay alive in a world dying?

Castellé soon realized that you simply do not. And that was fine. Fine and good.

She'd just close her eyes and let herself pass.

She'd take herself before the Mystings could.

She'd die with a soul.

She drew out her dagger...