Deep in snow-crested mountains a stout figure stepped up to a stele of otherworldly power, engraved with a strange avian figure. A hefty book sat at the base, its cover appeared to shift under the diffuse light, pages exuding a barely contained aura from within. Any drifting snowflakes disappeared in its vicinity. Temptation steered a hand to crack the book open. A sonorous lilting voice spoke.
“Foul dwarf of Zharr, meddling with petty fractured godlings, unfit even to feed the winds of magic.”
“But weakness has a purpose. Your kind… predictable…”
“I have read the past, scried your future. Emboldened by the flames of change you will rise anew, an agent of true Chaos. This tome will provide you with the answers you abandoned to live a meager life with a great weight on your head. Let me lift it for you, embrace the transitory.”
A chromatism of flames swirled and danced around…
Burning, yet icy…
Pungent, spicy, and strangely fragrant…
Painful, yet salving of all worldly burdens and long held grudges…
Twisting the soul, stripping the soul’s understanding of itself.
"You will lose your face…
your name…
your kin…
your hat…
your pride…
and all else you once held dear…"
Piece by piece, essence was laid bare in the mind and melded into something… new…
“There is a great meeting, in a realm unknown. A charade of champions gather in the name of the fractured Hashut. They are of no threat to me, but their very co-existence implies a traversal of realms that cannot be allowed.”
“Go, my puppet.”
“It is all just as planned. You will be my voice, my ears, and my eye in the liminal space. You will have no face but the face I need you to wear.”
A portal, black as the darkest cavern at its center, yawned open. The Faceless stepped through.
