Entry 1344 – “The Stranger in Soot”
Date: Year 1043
The heavens are quiet now. Too quiet. It has been seven years since War fell. Seven years of staring at silence and expecting her voice in it.
I came to the mortal realm to distract myself. To forget.
Instead, I found him.
Nyxiren. A man who speaks of death as if it were a hallway. He came to me bearing stories of the Hells—not fearfully, but reverently. Claimed he made a deal once, long ago. He said it gave him power, but not freedom.
That—that—is what caught my attention. Power, but no freedom. We are not so different, he and I.
I will keep him close. For now.
Entry 1347 – “Ashes and Ambition”
Date: Year 1046
He is brilliant. Tactless, but brilliant. His theories of arcane resonance mimic some of the formulas I created before the Sundering—but twisted. Reflected through a darker mirror.
He is honest about what he is. He calls himself the first of something. I believe him.
But what strikes me is his restraint. For one who commands undeath, he speaks often of life. He does not raise the dead as armies—he treats them like burdens he must carry.
I offered him access to part of the library.
Not the inner sanctum. Just enough to see if he might understand me.
Entry 1355 – “The Sterile Fields”
Date: Year 1058
We tried something together.
It was reckless. But we hoped.
Nyxiren believed he could reverse the damage—the withering of the soul that comes from lichdom. I agreed. If it worked, perhaps undeath could be softened, made... tolerable.
But it didn’t work.
The backlash was immediate. Life itself recoiled. A pulse of dead magic burst outward and silenced the land. Nothing grows there now. No roots. No birdsong. The Weave itself avoids the place.
I offered to seal the region. He refused. He stood in the center of the destruction and wept. I think part of him died there. But another part—the hungrier part—survived.
Entry 1366 – “The Lines He Crosses”
Date: Year 1070
He has been distant. His spells are stronger. His presence heavier. The ley lines across Mystara are erratic—fluxes that shouldn't exist. I sent envoys. They did not return.
I confronted him.
He denied nothing.
He said the world wastes its magic, letting it seep into the soil when it could be harnessed. “Why should we not take what slumbers?” he asked.
I answered only with silence.
He told me I was growing afraid. I told him he had already become what he feared.
We parted.
Not as enemies. Not yet.
Entry 1372 – “The Unmaking”
Date: Year 1072
He came into my sanctum.
Uninvited.
I knew the moment he crossed the threshold. He wore the dark of undeath like a crown now. The lines of his soul had become calligraphies of hunger.
He said he came for knowledge. That I had withheld power that belonged to the world.
I tried to reason. I tried to remind him of who he had been.
He struck first.
I do not remember the incantation I used. Only that it worked. I unwove him—thread by thread, until nothing remained but the corruption he carried. That poison bled into the land. Into my shelves. My wards screamed. My library burned. Not with flame, but with silence. Perfect, echoing silence.
That land is now hollow. My knowledge—lost. My friend—gone.
I tell no one of this.
Entry 1373 – “On Hollow Victories”
Date: Year 1073
What use is foresight when your only reward is grief?
I saw him. I nurtured him. I opened a door I should have sealed forever.
Nyxiren was not evil. He was desperate. That was always the danger.
The people call me wise. The mortals pray to me for clarity. But they do not know that I would give up every spell I’ve ever woven just to unmake one friendship I once called sacred.
Entry 1387 – “The Ashes Still Whisper”
Date: Year 1087
I returned today.
To the site where my library once stood. To the sterile crater where threads of the Weave no longer twist. It is not ash—it is memory scorched into silence.
There are still stones here. Some shelves half-melted. Books fused together in unnatural angles. The corruption lingers, whispering at the edges of reality, like a wound that refuses to scab.
I found a glyph etched beneath the rubble—his handwriting. Not a curse. Not a ward. Just one word:
“Sorry.”
I stood for a long while.
I do not forgive him.
But I miss him.
Entry 2046 – “His Echoes in Others”
Date: Year 1646
Another warlock rose today.
I saw it in the threads—different name, same pact. Another fool convinced they can bargain their soul like currency. Another mortal emboldened by the precedent Nyxiren set. He opened a path that cannot be closed.
They do not know his name. Only his method. They call it “The Old Way.” The Lich Rites are studied in secret, etched into black vellum and buried beneath tower floors. Students whisper about the first but never speak of what he cost.
Even now, Nyxiren shapes the world. Not through conquest—but through possibility.
That is the truth I must bear. Not all legacies are chosen. Some are merely left behind when we are gone.
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