Grief

Khelghamira grieved the world that once was. She grieved what the world had been before it was bathed in fire. Before it became what it was now, a blazing patchwork of flame and magma, inhabited only by undead and by the most hardy and heat-resistant of beings.

She grieved what had been, and was no more. She grieved all the beings that had once been living, and that now haunted the infernal world in undead form. She grieved the other beings that had also once been living, but that were now not even undead but simply gone, passed on to whatever afterlife they had earned.

She grieved the trees that might have once graced the hills of Ufmarkt, the cities and castles that might have once stood but have since melted into slag. She grieved the oceans that might have once been water, but were now red molten rock.

She didn't remember for sure whether there had been any trees, any cities, whether the oceans had ever held water. She didn't remember what the world had been before. No one did. But that didn't decrease her grief.

In fact, that she grieved most of all. The world that had been was not just gone, but forgotten. Gone even from memory. She did not know what she grieved, and she grieved that she did not know it.