“The false dawn comes.” The words scraped, not from Davorin’s throat, but from a deeper, colder chasm. His spine went rigid as a frozen timber. The eyes, twin voids of ink, fixed on Morvan’s prone form. A low growl rumbled in his chest, a sound utterly alien to the cheerful gravedigger. Then, with shocking speed, Davorin lunged. Morvan, already half-submerged in the delicious murk of impending sleep, registered a sudden gust of wind, a blur of motion. It was an annoyance, nothing more. He shifted, a minute adjustment of his shoulder, rolling slightly to the left. Davorin’s possessed form, arms outstretched like a ravenous wraith, slammed into the cold stone slab where Morvan’s head had been moments before. A puff of calcified grit rose from the strike, smelling of cellar mould. Morvan simply stretched out on the adjacent, unoccupied slab, pulling his tattered cloak higher over his chest. This one was even colder, better. The brief interruption had, if anything, solidified his desire for proper rest. He yawned, a hollow, grinding noise that echoed through the mortuary. Davorin, or rather, the entity controlling him, recoiled with a shuddering gasp. The force of the missed attack had jarred something, a resonance of Morvan’s utter indifference. The graveled voice hissed back, shrill with fury. “Insolent speck! You dare to ignore the voice of the Nightbringer? The very fabric of this false world trembles before my truth!” A low thrum vibrated through the floor flagstones. Morvan heard a groaning above him, a deep, resonant rumble that shook loose flakes of granite dust from the ceiling. He squinted one eye open, annoyed. “Could you keep it down?” Morvan mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. “There’s a draft now.” The hum intensified. The lone stone chimera perched on the gable began leaking greasy, tar-black pitch from its eye sockets. The ink sizzled against weathered mortar, chewing trenches down its snout. With a deafening crack, the vault overhead split wide. Chunks of masonry rained down, fracturing across the slabs. A jagged rift exposed the purple twilight overhead. Through the gap, the bloated violet disc of the daylight entity flared against the mist. The voice boomed, now amplified by the open air, echoing across the nearby crypts. “Behold, your pathetic, false god! The parasitic orb that drains this realm of its very essence! Join me, mortal! Join the Nightbringer, and together we shall plunge Nocen into the true, eternal night! Only then can this world truly live, free from the hunger of the Weeping Divines, free from the slow, agonizing consumption of the dawn!” Morvan sighed, a long, weary exhalation that seemed to deflate him further into the stone. The draft was genuinely irritating now, wafting cold, damp air directly onto his face. And the endless sermonizing. He just wanted to sleep. He fumbled blindly beneath his tattered cloak, searching for something, anything, to throw. His fingers brushed against a small, ornate object. It was a silver spoon, a relic from his past life as a 'disgraced noble' – a petty tribute he’d been meant to offer the Divine of Minor Indigestion last week, but had forgotten. It felt cold, substantial. Perfect. Without bothering to open his eyes, Morvan flicked his wrist. The spoon, imbued with a sliver of whatever dormant, barely-acknowledged power resided within him, shot through the air. It was a limp flick from the wrist, yet the cutlery whistled straight across the room. It struck Davorin squarely in the center of his forehead with a sharp *CLANG!* The chime rang off fractured walls. Davorin’s body stiffened, a violent, full-body tremor shaking him. The black in his eyes swirled, struggling, then with a guttural, inhuman shriek of pure agony, it violently recoiled. The darkness drained away, receding as if sucked back into some unseen void, leaving behind Davorin’s familiar warm, earthy brown irises. He blinked, dazed, a perfect, circular red mark now blooming on his forehead. “Morvan?” Davorin mumbled, his voice thick and confused, his head wobbling slightly. “Did… did I fall asleep standing up again? My head aches.” He reached up to rub the newly forming bruise. The hunched grotesques budding out from neighboring tombs froze mid-sprout, caught halfway between gray basalt and boiling pitch. Then, with a furious, guttural roar, a figure erupted from the fog, a blur of ebony cloth and glinting steel. Lysoria of the Crimson Veil vaulted through the fractured pediment, darkness curling off her knuckles like black grease, her stare fixed and blazing. “How DARE you!” she shrieked, her voice a whip-crack of fury. “How DARE you disturb his slumber!” Tendrils of darkness whipped from her coat sleeves, shearing through the half-formed beasts before they could drop from the eaves. A six-winged monstrosity shrieked as her blade cleaves through its thorax in a spray of powdered lime. The carved limbs dissolved into soot. She dropped onto the flagstones beside Morvan, her feral snarl instantly smoothing into adoring reverie. She knelt by his slab, her voice softening to a dangerous purr. “Forgive them, my Dread Sovereign. They are but ignorant pests. I shall ensure no further sound, no errant whisper, no ill-omened shadow dares to graze your peace. Sleep, my love. Sleep, and let me guard your beautiful apathy.” Her gloved palm hovered an inch above his stubble, hesitant to wake him. Morvan, already drifting back into the blissful dark, merely snorted. “Thanks,” he mumbled, his voice barely a breath. “Just… try to keep the noise down, yeah?” Lysoria’s lips curved into a slow, predatory smile. “As you command.” Silence settled in, punctuated only by Davorin’s groggy sniffling and the steady plink of resin draining from broken gutters outside. Morvan was almost there, almost completely lost to the sweet oblivion. Then boots skidded along the entryway gravel. “SOVEREIGN! OH, BLESSED SOVEREIGN, WE’RE DOOMED! THEY’VE DECLARED HOLY WAR!” Yurik, the peddler, scrambled through the opening, lank hair pasted across his forehead with sweat. He stumbled, almost tripping over his own feet, clutching a half-empty wineskin and a crumpled parchment to his chest. “The Weeping Divines! They’re furious! Their Arch-Priestess just issued a sacred decree! They say you… you didn’t pay the local wine tax!”

The Shadow's Pitch