I returned to this realm's version of the Shrine, alone since it would not tolerate Or'do's presence. As the darkness faded, my eyes widened in shock: the two story dwelling, the pillars that reached for the heavens like supplicant hands frozen in stone, all were bathed in flame. Blighted tongues seethed over the lands, burning without consuming, gnawing without devouring. The doll looked upon me, through me, beyond me, to the blemished iron fence that spanned this place. Its gate yawned open, and within its metal maw loomed the seated figure of a man slumped in his wheelchair.

Looking upon him, I stiffened, his Darkness equivalent to staring into the Sun. Like a Cinder that flared with shadow in light's stead, he glowed with emptiness, a bottomless abyss into which I felt drawn. This, was my final foe; and he had lurked here the entire time. The Dark had taken great pleasure in culling itself, creating Hunters to eliminate its weakest, to leave only the mighty towering over their fallen, ruling this forsaken realm from a throne of their fellows' corpses. I glanced down, realizing only now that I had crossed the threshold, and before my feet lay the edge of his wheelchair. Twitching and recoiling in shock, I raised my eyes to his, searching that weathered face, seeing nothing but the Dark's eternal hunger. A thousand thousand of his own kin had he slain, and with their blood grown almighty.

"Bearer of the Darkness." I took a half step back, falling into a fighter's low stance. "You shall not leave this place alive."

"Then why," His voice was thunderous, resonant, the sound of stones falling and sundering upon the ground. "Have you already knelt?"

I felt an incredible weight press down upon me, driving me to my knees before him. He stood, apparently in no need of the wheelchair's service, perhaps employing it in langour or boredom. "Thou hath erred, Ashen One." Slowly, he raised his scythe, its edge shining like silver stained in hardening blood as it pressed against my neck. "Thou hath permitted thy hatred to consume thee. That, is to be expected." He drew back, the scythe hanging ominously above. "Thy weakness and the weakness of thy Flame, is thy undoing. Know this, and be consumed by it."

The scythe descends.
Agony twinning, branching through my neck in tendrils of fire.
My vision turns black.