You need to unlock it. The Keeper said gently as I dragged a forlorn hand across the firmly resolute portcullis, as if my touch alone would soften its columns or persuade its lock.

"I cannot walk, much less fight my way through this labyrinth."

All the same, you cannot very well smash through it. She chided, her soft words neither infuriating no comforting me, merely deepening the grim darkness that gathered inside, swallowing my soul and quenching the fires behind my eyes. Then, a vison: Or'do falling to the the ground, which seethed and writhed like a beast in pain. Creatures twisted and foul, blighted in ways neither words nor mind could possibly capture, slashed with claws like rust plagued iron, battering him and driving him to his knees. The scene diminished slightly, retreating until I could see clearly that he had indeed found the Lantern, and proceeded in his boredom, well beyond it. The home of the Witch of Hemlock Charnel Lane, lay sundered and afire around him, great rugged slabs of stone jutting from a sea of roiling shadow.

This is but a glimpse of that which is yet to come. I sensed again the clawing sadness, that fathomless sorrow that swelled from deep within, and rose like the ravenous tides to devour her, body and soul. The Darkness has waited long from its return, has lingered in the shadows on reality's fringe and watched us. Now, at last, it swells from the deep to seize our realm once more.

"Surely it cannot all pour forth!" I said this more in denial than hope, yet her response nonetheless heartened me.

Indeed. When I said this was but a glimpse, it was not merely my penchant for poetry. The Darkness' garrisons still lurk hidden and baleful; their first legion this is, a mere scouting party behind which the siege shall follow. 

"Then we have time still." I gritted my teeth, and locking fingers of steel around the portcullis, hauled myself to my feet. Swaying, standing on legs that burned and cried out in silent voices, clawing beneath my skin with desperate hands, I all the same drew back my iron fist. "He shan't give up. Not now, and not ever." Flame seethed within me, and upon my breast the Cinder shone: a broadening disk of mottled light that flared and blazed, turning my undead flesh into a lantern lit with undying flame. "And neither shall I!" My fist crashed against the gate, and beneath my power it crumbled. I felt the Dark within me, that blighted Cinder that coveted my warmth. It loathed me, hated me for that which I represented. Good. Let it try to stop me.