THE PILGRIM

Outcast from the living; struck down in public for a crime you did not commit, and promptly banished in your rage. Sweltering in infinite black seas for what felt like lifetimes, a swirling torrent of claws and teeth lashing out at shadows in the depths.

Washed ashore, cleansed of the poison and tired beyond measure. There, in the mists, you found the Village. The air thin and cold, it seemed to freeze life itself over. A silence only ever broken by the faintest sounds, the crush of snow beneath feet, the gentle flicker of a torch; sounds to remind you that you can hear, but only barely.

You brought them the gift of speech, in a sense. Sign language. The words were frozen in all of your throats, condemned to eternal, perfect silence, but you could still signal.

The Mists are a place of reflection. For much of your time there, the world felt distant, almost immaterial, like you were in a dream. But when you would sit among the tall, bluish-green grass, you could almost start to reclaim some sense of being. You could start to hear far-off songbirds, the rustle of the canopy ever cloaked in fog.

One day, sitting in contemplation at the edge of the Shade Shore, It appeared to you. A tall silhouette arising from the depths, a pyramid of squabbling shades tearing at the air for its blood going calmly ignored. Chains bound every inch of its form.

It reached out to you, and spoke. “I will offer you a second chance. Come with me. Back to the world you left, where you might find resolution.”

And so, you did.

You are the PILGRIM. Come back to Elstren from a world of chains, to feel freedom again… and to let it go, once and for all.