Shine bright, Arelians!
You don’t know where you first heard the song, but you’ve noticed other people humming it too, snatches of faint melody in the fields and the mess hall. Simple, wordless and haunting, like the sighing of the wind through the trees, it seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once. You could swear you’ve known the tune all your life, but for some reason you can only remember snatches of it. Last night you caught yourself singing it to your youngest as she shivered through a night-time fever, and for a moment you thought your voice was joined by another, from down on the ground, in the margins of the Shroud. A voice that knew the rest of the song.
And now you stand in the darkness, the first tendrils of the Shroud weaving around your toes. The song calls to you from the forest, and in the distance you see the pale figure of a woman slip between the trees...
