"I cannot bear to let you remain here, not like this. Take my hand, mother is waiting for us both."

"Haunt this hill until the hells consume it." Azurius lurched away from the cold hand and pushed himself against the pockmarked bulwark of a boulder. Its rough surface tore at his skin, setting free torpid blood. He gasped, his every straining fiber aching to be free of its ragged shell. "Only the wind listens to you anymore."

"Both our times grow short." The shade hovered behind his shoulder.

He would have spat in his brother's face one more time if he had possessed the strength. The chill wind bit into his bones, past both flesh and the ragged wrappings that adorned him.

"You must listen to my words brother. Listen or be lost. I have not been given long to take you with me."

"My time will not end here," Azurius rasped, clutching his chest. "Taunt that whore you wanted for a wife. She may still desire your company."

"This is a place for dying Azurius."

"Speak no more to me!" Azurius flung himself onto the scrabble, clawing his way upwards. No lights burned in the worn archway of the temple he sought. Its cavernous opening appeared more a maw of some fetid power in the pale light. "Do not beg for this God's mercy brother." Azurius clawed higher still, watching as the pox-marred woman came to the temple's singular door.

She looked back with a moment's hesitation before the darkness of the temple's gate devoured her.

"There is nothing here for you; there never was."

"Silence!" He flung a slab through the cold shape of the specter. "I will not hear that word from your lips." It skittered to a stop after a restless journey further down the hill. "You know nothing of mercy."

"You must listen." His brother grasped at him, those cold hands passing through his flesh. Azurius shivered, the shade's passing leaving unpleasant memories. "I still love you. I have come to save you, Azurius."

"Pah! Be gone from this place." He could not shake off what the shade had done to him. Azurius waved a bleeding hand before his eyes. Nothing chased away the cold touch, or what it had drawn up within him. He clenched his eyes shut, but the visions would not cease. "Betrayer. Murderer!"

"Do my hands drip with blood?"

Azurius clenched his scabbed fingers about the cruel edges. The slate's cold and jagged embrace sliced open deadened flesh. He sought oblivion in that numbing pain.