"Well, I appreciate you all taking me in." Sean said to the other players as the finale battle died down, "If other members of my old guild had been on, we could have given you quite a show."

He joined the loose throng of players as he descended from the sky on his flying mount, which was only a simple summon of a shadow-beast in that vaguely resembled a small dragon. In the sparring battle that had just taken place, Sean had used his character's multitude of advanced summoning abilities to create something of a PvE scenario for the players that desired it. He stepped off of his mount, unsummoning the creature when his feet were on the ground, and stepped into the crowd.

The avatar of his character, Azoth_Baal, was quite unique, and Sean had spent a great deal of time working on it so that it met his preferences. Interestingly, rather than having the dusky skin and amber eyes of a typical Dark Elf, he had managed to give his character an albino appearance, with bleached skin and hair, and eyes a malevolent blood red.

Sean got a whisper message notification, and checked his UI to see who it was from. The notification's source was listed as "Stormsorrow," the name of the chaotic runeblade that hung at his hip. A very rare and highly-scripted item, it sometimes "spoke" to Sean though whisper messages, meant to represent the cursed blade talking into his character's mind. Usually these messages were tied to certain bosses, global events, or were just generic messages put on a timer.

He checked the message, which stated, "[color=black]The wheel turns, and the cycle begins anew. Those who sit beyond the veil watch eagerly, as this world draws its last breath. This is not the end, but the beginning of their great work.[/color]"

Sean was quite amused by this. It seemed that the devs had put in a little message to coincide with the server shutdown. Given how rare these runeblade items were, Sean was probably one of a bare handful that actually got to experience this sort of message. He savored it quietly, adding it to a long list of good memories spent with YGGDRASIL.