"Kaelen?" Lyra’s voice was a hoarse whisper. "No... you shouldn’t be here. The curse... Malachar wants to absorb it. He wants to become a true Lich King."
"What are you doing?!" Malachar shrieked.
"They won’t come," the scout spat bitterly. "Ser Alistair said it’s ‘below their concern.’ He said Lyra should have known better than to delve old tombs. He’s... he’s different now. Arrogant. So I came to the monster. At least monsters are honest."
He didn’t take the sword. Instead, he placed his hand on Alistair’s shoulder. dark hero party save
And then Ser Alistair arrived, clad in shining gold armor, Dawnbreaker at his hip. He looked older, wearier, and for the first time, uncertain.
"Please," the scout gasped. "You’re the Shadowmender, aren’t you? The one they whisper about? Our party... we went to cleanse the Sunken Crypt. It was a trap. A necromancer—a real one, not like you—he’s using a corrupted heartstone. It’s draining the life from my friends. They have two days left. Maybe less."
The Shadow’s Mercy
"Stay here," Kaelen said, pulling on a cloak that drank the light. "If I’m not back in three days, assume the necromancer won."
The songs were wrong.
Lyra was the first to reach him. She knelt in front of him, tears streaming down her face. "Kaelen
Kaelen had been dead for seven years. At least, that’s what the songs said. The songs that bards sang in taverns, the ones where the "Radiant Five" slew the Lich King and sealed the Rift. In those songs, Kaelen was the tragic sixth member—the Necromancer who turned traitor at the final moment, driven mad by the very darkness he sought to control. They sang of how the Paladin, Ser Alistair, had plunged the holy blade Dawnbreaker into Kaelen’s heart to save the world.
Kaelen looked at Lyra. He looked at the heartstone. He felt the curse writhing inside him, hungry, whispering for him to give in, to let the darkness win.