[@Polybius] [@DocRock] [@Dark Light] [@Pyromaniacwolf][hr][h3]Chapter I[/h3]"Like a pawn cast from the board, so too did you fall with a start. The shallows of thought behind you, you awoke with a start upon the sandy shore and beheld from where you laid a fire in the sky. A surreal glow filtered down from above, pocked with ash snow. The warm glow among the deep midnight and what surely were the stars beyond pulled your conscious to. This was no dream no more, you were alive again, or as alive as a dead man could be. There was no crow of gulls on the wing, no breeze through your hair, and nothing but the ambiance of the tranquil waves and the knock of wood that lapped against the beach."

"As fate would have it, the life of a sailor might well have saved you, only to confront you with wherever you were now; somewhere outside the darkness of your own fading heart. Still craning, now straining your neck to see, you managed to look down from your resting place upon your battered limbs. You were gouged here and there, red wounds open but not seeping, stared back at by the snarling pantherine tattoo that lined your inner arm, accompanied by a serpent and dagger on the other. The glow however, between your waterlogged boots, came from a tremendous blaze on the horizon, far beyond where eyes dared reach. Whatever had transpired there surely brought you here to this shore and called down the ashes that nested on you."