Andrea ripped her silent blade from the creature’s neck, the steel leaving the flesh with a soft, almost reverent hiss. She moved with ethereal elegance, stepping back from the fallen beast as though gliding on a breath of winter wind. Her gaze locked onto the unnatural and stubbornly pulsing heart inside its ruined chest, an aberrant rhythm that made her frown crease deeper across her lips. Her lone emerald eye, sharp and bright against the pallor of her face, held the creature in a sorrowful, unreadable stare.
She circled it slowly, carefully, with the instinctive grace of a predator studying another predator. The snowfall muffled her steps, yet every rustle of her cloak sounded strangely loud in the stillness. Frosted breath escaped her parted lips, mingling with the drifting flakes as she traced her path around the dying thing.

Andrea halted. Her fingers curled tightly around the hilt of her cursed weapon, the runes carved along its spine whispering faintly against her palm. Tilting her head just slightly as though listening to something only she could hear she exhaled a soft, mournful sigh.[color=ec008c] “I am sorry that you serve a cruel master,”[/color] she murmured, voice hushed with an ache far older than the wound she wore behind her eye. [color=ec008c]“You do not deserve this.”[/color]

The words left her like a promise, or perhaps a confession. She spoke to them with the tenderness of a mother soothing a frightened child, a gentleness that stood in stark contrast to the violence staining the snow. Her eye shifted fully back to emerald, bright and alive, before she stepped toward the beast once more. With practiced care she wiped the black ichor from her blade, each stroke deliberate, almost ceremonial.

Then, with a quick, decisive motion, she drew the edge across her own palm. Blood welled up instantly, dark, warm, eager. The runes along her dagger flared to life, glowing with a hungry, unnatural brilliance as they drank in her offering.
Her voice began to rise in a whisper, soft as falling snow, weaving ancient cadence with the rhythm of her heartbeat. The words came from deep within her, each syllable gathering power, shaping the air around her.
[color=39b54a]“Tear the soil… bow to my voice… take shape once more…”[/color]

The incantation crescendo, the whisper swelling into something sharp and commanding. With a final breath she drove the glowing dagger into the frozen earth. The impact sent a shock of power through the ground, a pulse of necrotic energy radiating outward in a slow, rippling wave.

Snow scattered. The earth trembled beneath her boots. Darkness seeped from the soil like smoke rising in reverse, curling in twisting tendrils as something old, something bound by her will, answered the call. Andrea stepped back, watching with calm certainty as the world itself seemed to stir at her feet. The dead were listening.

Actions:
1: Moved away
2: Animate the Dead. Magic F-7 points, Animate the Dead F-21 points 
3: Moved away