[@Darkwatck01]

John Dersmitt steadied his breath as his wife, brother, and children gathered around his bed. The time was close now; he could almost count how many more breaths he had left to draw.

"Ann..." he whispered in a labored breath, "my dearest love, watch over the family for me."
His wife nodded, her own wrinkled hand clasped in his. As the family began their solemn prayer, he drew his final breath. Over the next several seconds, memories of his life flooded back to him. Then, at last, darkness.

His soul, now immersed in the endless void of the astral plane, began its final journey to the light of paradise that lay at the End of all things. He did not get far, however, before something else took hold of him.

Terror- pure, mortal terror filled him as a dark fiend bared its gaping maw and dug its teeth into his soul.

"Mmm...delicious." Pain unlike anything he'd ever felt before burned into his mind, and precious memories began to trickle away - replaced by horrors he could never unsee.

John screamed. He saw visions of his children melting to blood, his wife and siblings skinned alive, his home and all his possessions burned with fire. He listened to their agonized screams, their desperate pleas for relief, and the tormented writhing of their innocent souls.

This...surely this could not be the afterlife!

He could not remember the happy days anymore, those blissful moments of peace that every father yearns for. He could not remember the last time he got to embrace his wife- what was her name?

He had forgotten her name. He forgot his siblings' names. He forgot his mother's name. His daughter's name was slipping away.

"Please..." he begged, "don't take them away from me!"

The fiend merely laughed and devoured more of his memories. Now their faces slipped away from him- or what was left of them from his horrific visions of them.

As the last dregs of hope trickled away, he heard a still, small voice whisper to him:

"Rest now, I've found thee."

A warm, gentle soul embraced him to shield him from the gluttonous fiend.  Enraged, the creature turned its maw to the Voice and fought to rip her off him, shredding her mind and memories instead. Though she cried out in agony, she did not waver, and even fought back, chipping away at the fiend for every memory gouged from her mind.

Little by little, everything started to come back to him as the Voice battled to piece him back together. His wife's name was Ann! He remembered her eyes, how they changed so many colors in the light. He remembered his daughter and her infectious laugh. He remembered the joyous family meals and precious moments with his siblings. He remembered everything. The Voice had given it back to him.

Finally, the fiend had enough, annoyed as it was from the numerous wounds the Voice has inflicted. Only when it fled into the void did the Voice release John from her embrace.

Her spirit reached out to touch him.

"Fly, and be free."

Before resuming his journey upwards, he asked, "Tell me, are you an angel?"

The Voice replied, "I am human."

The light of the afterlife grew brighter and brighter, until at last John awoke on a field of green.
___

The Voice, however, had not been so lucky. Beaten, battered, and shredded of countless memories, she limped back to her home base, barely clinging to life. She reached out to merge with the Tome of Memories, a magical place she'd created to restore her mind, before emerging from the astral plane.

From the portal emerged a vaguely humanoid creature, armored with scales and bone plates and wrapped in shadows. When all coverings were shed from her body, they left behind a human woman, whose dark complexion and gentle features were covered by a simple black robe. She knelt down, picked up a rock, and etched another tallymark on a large nearby stone bearing nearly a thousand such marks.

While she fought to rescue that soul from the clutches of the Voidspawn, she'd sensed two familiar souls nearby- a friend and a lover.

[i]Could it be true?[/i] she mused, [i]the two people in the world whom I love the most, together in one place?[/i] There could be no better time to visit them. The woman portalled back through the astral plane toward where she last felt them, and emerged in front of the Brewer's Guild in Southaven.

The bouncer guarding the entrance nearly jumped out of his skin. The individual standing before him, robed all in black and bearing a battle-scythe on her back, was the very image of Death itself. The man turned pale and dropped to his knees.

"Spare me!" he croaked.

The woman chuckled and lifted him to his feet. "Fear not, I have not come for thy soul. Be at peace, friend. Pray tell, hast thou seen a Marked Knight pass this way?"

The bouncer scratched his head, then frowned. "You mean that- you mean that Isparan bounty hunter? Sir Mesanychta?"

The woman smiled. "Yes, the very one. Is he here?"

"If you've come to take his soul, yeah."

She chuckled again and flipped back her hood before entering the guildhall. All manner of wonderful sights, sounds, and smells greeted her, things she'd dearly missed during her many long days in the void. Nebel, she sensed, was not in the main hall, but behind the door to a side room.

The woman took a moment to calm her rapidly beating heart and laid a hand on the door handle.