The woman clambered to the top of the hill of bones. The sound of her ragged breathing carried far into the half-light that revealed the plain before her. A plain stained red-brown from countless battles over the course of untold years.

Tattered souls wandered mournfully and gusts of wind rent then further with the blood-dust. She shivered and cast her eyes down. Her lips moved silent for a moment, then she straightened and tied a scarf over her mouth and nose. The dust could damage more than the ephemeral, she’d learned that the hard way. She checked herself and her scant gear, and lacking any other justifucation for delay, descended to the plain.

She avoided the souls as best she could but it was not long before the first caught her and passed through her. For an instant she knew the parts of it that were lost. The holes it sought to fill with her soul. She, no, her soul, ached to complete it. A tear left a track of thin and bloody mud as it rolled down her cheek to catch at the corner of her mouth.