Sahrye

Nightmare Sahrye Mahlored, Shield Warden

Sahrye Mahlored
Status	Active
Race	Gnome
Gender	Female
Guild	Necromancer
Instance	Prime

Sahrye Mahlored was born in a quiet gnomish settlement near Shard, where her sharp amber eyes and unsettling fascination with anatomy set her apart early. While other gnomes lost themselves in gears and alchemy, Sahrye studied bones, sinew, and the quiet machinery beneath the skin. Her relentless questions drove off nearly everyone—except Talia, a human girl who became her closest and only friend.

When Talia died suddenly, Sahrye sought explanations from priests, healers, and scholars. None offered more than hollow comforts and superstition. Refusing to accept ignorance as truth, she left home to chase answers across Elanthia.

Her journey took her from the morgue on Aesry Surlaenis’a, where she learned the cold precision of anatomical study, to the battlefield triages outside The Crossing, where she witnessed the body’s limits in real time. She even spent a season in the plague houses of Mer’Kresh, the floating city where disease and desperation provided grim lessons no formal teacher ever would.

Yet still—no answer to the question that haunted her: What truly happens the moment life slips away?

Everything changed one storm-lashed night in the forests near Therenborough. Exhausted and near death herself, Sahrye was found by a ragged gnome woman who pressed a polished obsidian square to her forehead. The stranger spoke of forbidden methods and ancient devices—necromantic knowledge capable of dissecting the line between life and death.

When Sahrye awoke, the woman had vanished, but the obsidian remained, fused to her skin and humming faintly.

This path led her to the Philosophers of the Knife, whose pursuit of the Great Work aligned perfectly with the truth she had chased since childhood. Sahrye embraced necromancy—not for dominion or cruelty, but for understanding. For the mechanism behind death. For the answer that might explain Talia’s disappearance from the world.

Now, she moves through Elanthia as a shadow among crowds, hiding in plain sight. Feared by society, shunned by gods, and hunted by the Hounds of Rutilor, Sahrye continues her research in secret. She is unwavering in her pursuit of the one truth she has never been granted:

Sahrye’s Journal

“Entry Found Beneath the Cloak”

The ink here is cramped, precise, written by a steady and deliberate hand. Several pages appear to have been torn out.

Day… I’ve lost count. Forest dusk.

If this entry ends in blotched ink, it’s because my fingers are still trembling from the cold. Or perhaps from what she told me.

I do not know her name.

I doubt she had one to offer.

But she found me—half-conscious, half-starved, and entirely defeated—curled beneath a cedar like a wounded animal. I remember the crunch of her steps through needles, the clack of bone charms against her cloak. Thought she was a hallucination at first. Perhaps she was.

“Child,” she said, which irritated me. I have not been a child for a long time. “You claw at death without tools. No wonder it tears you apart.”

I tried to rise. Failed. She pressed something cold against my forehead:

A square of obsidian. Polished smooth.

And old. Older than she was. Older than me.

“You want to know why the body fails,” she murmured. “Why a heart stops. Why a friend doesn’t wake.”

Talia’s name clawed its way up my throat, but I couldn’t speak.

“The priests have no answers. The healers lack the imagination.” A dry chuckle. “But there are devices. Methods. Sorceries that cut deeper than steel or truth. You hunger for them. I can smell it.”

The obsidian burned—not hot, but cold, as though winter itself had found an anchor beneath my skin. I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.

“You may yet be one of ours,” she whispered. “If you survive what comes next.”

And then she was gone.

No footprints. No broken branches. No sign she had ever existed. But the obsidian?

But the obsidian?

It remains. Adhered to me as though it had always been there.

It hums at night.

It resonates when I think of Talia.

It… sings when I practice my dissections.

I am not fool enough to mistake this for blessing.

If anything, it is a summons.

The world cast me aside.

The ignorant pushed me away.

The fearful shunned me.

But perhaps—finally—something has whispered back. I will follow this voice.

I will follow this voice.

I will learn what lies beyond the veil.

I will not stop.

Not until I understand what took her from me.

Not until I can take it back.

— S. Mahlored

“The Morning After”

Written the morning of the 24th day of the 5th month of Uthmor the Giant in the year of the Emerald Dolphin, 355 years after the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I barely slept.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her — the old woman, her clouded eyes cutting through me like she could read each thought as it formed. I tried to convince myself she was a hallucination brought on by hunger or exhaustion.

But the obsidian is still there.

It rests just above my eyes, fused to my skin like a third, silent witness to everything I think. It doesn’t hurt, exactly. But it presses. As if it’s listening. Or waiting.

I woke before dawn and checked the clearing where I collapsed. No tracks. No broken branches. No imprint in the needles where she knelt. As though the forest itself swallowed any evidence she’d passed through.

The only sign she existed at all is the square of stone embedded in my forehead.

And the faint hum behind my thoughts.

I walked for hours today, trying to steady myself, but the stone reacts to things. More than once it pulsed faintly as I passed a dead log or the bleached bones of some woodland creature. Not light. Not exactly. More like a subtle shift in the air, as though something inside it recognized something inside them.

I do not know what that means.

But I know this:

I am not imagining it.

When I stopped to eat (the little left of what those thieves didn’t steal), a raven landed a few feet away and stared at me so intently I dropped my food. Its head tilted. Its gaze flicked to the obsidian. Then it let out a sound… nothing like a normal call. Almost like laughter.

I threw a stick at it. It did not move. It waited until I gathered my pack before taking off with a flap that felt deliberately theatrical.

If the world is sending me a message, I’d prefer something less condescending than a pompous bird.

Still…

I feel different today.

Not better. Not worse.

Just… deviated. As though the path I slept on is not the same one I woke on.

I keep thinking about her last words:

“Either way, the Work will find you.”

I don’t know if I fear that, or if I’ve been waiting for it all these years.

Maybe both.

— S. Mahlored

“Attempts to Remove the Obsidian”

Written the evening of the 24th day of the 5th month of Uthmor the Giant in the year of the Emerald Dolphin, 355 years after the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I spent the afternoon trying to remove it.

I thought perhaps a few minutes with a blade would reveal a seam or some sign it was only adhered superficially. Foolish of me. Even as I write this, my hands are still shaking — not from pain, but from what didn’t happen.

First, I used a mirror in a small pond to see it properly. The stone casts no reflection. My face, my skin, the freckles around it — all reflected clearly. But the obsidian? Nothing. Only a small, perfect void, a hole where the light refuses to land.

That alone should have stopped me.

But curiosity has always outweighed caution.

I tried:

• My belt knife — the moment the metal touched the stone, the blade vibrated violently and nearly flew from my hand.

• My nails — nothing. I couldn’t get under the edge; it’s as though my skin grew over it overnight.

• Heating tongs in a small fire — when the metal neared the stone, the flame bent sideways. Sideways. Fire does not do that.

Finally, I pressed the tongs against it anyway.

I braced for pain.

No pain came.

Instead, I heard something.

A whisper. Not a voice. More like a memory of a voice. Like breath behind a closed door. It wasn’t speaking to me — more like speaking through me, using my mind to echo something ancient, something that has been waiting far longer than I’ve been alive.

I dropped the tongs instantly and vomited in the ferns.

Once I steadied myself, I noticed something worse:

My forehead wasn’t burned. The metal left no heat, no mark. But the obsidian pulsed afterward — a soft, rhythmic throb, like a heartbeat.

Not mine.

I stopped after that.

It is clear this object cannot be removed by hands or tools. I don’t know if that means I’m cursed or chosen or simply in far deeper than I understand.

But I know one thing with certainty:

Whatever this stone is —

whatever the old woman awakened —

it does not intend to let me walk away unchanged.

And despite everything…

…I don’t think I want to.

— S. Mahlored

“The Invitation”

Written the evening of the 30th day of the 5th month of Uthmor the Giant in the year of the Emerald Dolphin, 355 years after the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I have rewritten this entry six times. My hand still shakes.

What happened tonight cannot be undone.

I camped near the fork of the Theren River, hoping the water might quiet the obsidian’s strange hum. Instead, it seemed to sharpen it, like a knife on a whetstone. Still, I told myself it was only nerves. Exhaustion. Loneliness.

Then the fire shifted.

Not brighter. Not dimmer. Only… wrong. The shadows leaned in toward the flame as if called.

A man spoke behind me.

“You’ve been carrying questions for a very long time, haven’t you?”

I turned so quickly I nearly lost my footing. A human man stood just beyond the firelight — mature, stout, dark-skinned, with thin white hair pulled back neatly and storm-grey eyes that saw far too much. He wore simple clothing: a brown tunic, coarse wool leggings, a golden mesh belt. A scholar’s reading spectacles perched on his nose.

Nothing extraordinary.

Nothing threatening.

And yet every part of me understood that he was neither lost nor harmless.

Two hooded figures lingered behind him. Silent. Watching.

“When a mind burns as brightly as yours,” the man continued, adjusting his spectacles, “it is only a matter of time before someone notices the smoke.”

I hadn’t told him my name. Nor my age. Nor why I wandered alone.

But he knew.

He moved around the fire with the steady rhythm of someone accustomed to study, not violence. When he reached me, he examined the obsidian on my brow as if it were a fascinating footnote in a manuscript.

“It accepted you,” he murmured. “Interesting.”

My voice scraped out of me. “Who are you?”

“A researcher. A writer. An exile.” He smiled faintly. “And, once upon a time, a man the world mistook for a righteous scholar.”

His eyes held mine with unsettling gentleness.

“I am here to offer you a choice, Sahrye Mahlored.”

My breath caught.

He still had not asked my name.

His tone shifted — softer, heavier.

“You stand at the threshold of truths most will never touch. The questions you carry, the obsidian you bear — they will not fade. They will grow. You must decide whether you walk blind, afraid of your own curiosity…”

He extended a hand — open, empty.

Not coercive.

Inviting.

“Or walk with those who understand what it means to seek beyond life and death.” I stared at him. At his calm. At his certainty. At the shadows that bent toward him like old companions.

I stared at him. At his calm. At his certainty. At the shadows that bent toward him like old companions.

“Why me?” I whispered.

“Because you have already begun,” he said simply. “And because the world will not love you for the things you wish to know — but we will not abandon you for them.”

A pause.

“You asked my name.”

He stepped fully into the firelight, and his face resolved with terrible clarity.

“I am Zamidren Book.”

The name struck me like a blow.

The author.

The anti-necromancy researcher.

The ghost.

The heretic.

The Triumphant. “I lead those who pursue the Great Work,” he said. “I will guide you. If you choose it.”

“I lead those who pursue the Great Work,” he said. “I will guide you. If you choose it.”

My heartbeat was thunder.

My thoughts raced.

Everything inside me screamed that this was a turning point — a fracture line in the shape of my life.

But the world had offered me only silence.

Only shame.

Only rejection.

He was the first to offer understanding.

I took his hand. The moment flesh touched flesh, something inside me snapped awake. A cold breath spilled across my mind. The world shifted — sharpened — as though a veil had torn.

The moment flesh touched flesh, something inside me snapped awake. A cold breath spilled across my mind. The world shifted — sharpened — as though a veil had torn.

I felt mana.

Not Life. Not Lunar. Not Elemental. Not Holy.

Something else.

Something impossible.

Something that wanted.

My knees buckled. Zamidren held me steady.

“Easy,” he murmured. “Your senses will adjust. The Arcane is overwhelming when first perceived.”

I could hear it — the awful, beautiful hum of a power that recognized me as its own.

I am terrified.

I am exhilarated.

I have joined the Necromancer Guild.

There is no turning back.

— S. Mahlored

“When the Mana Answered Back”

Written the evening of the 38th day of the 5th month of Uthmor the Giant in the year of the Emerald Dolphin, 355 years after the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I was prepared for the Arcane.

I thought I understood it — the way it hums through the air like a low vibration, the strange, thrumming cadence that settles behind the bones of the skull once you join the Guild. Zamidren calls it “the second heartbeat,” an attunement that only reveals itself when the mind is reshaped enough to perceive the impossible.

I have lived with that heartbeat for days now.

But today… something else stirred.

Something deeper.

I had gone into the woods to practice the first principles of Thanatology, as Zamidren instructed:

Do not just look at the body.

Listen to it.

Memory lingers where flesh has cooled.

Knowledge clings to bone.

I found a dead badger near a hollow root. Nothing special. No wounds. No rot yet. Still warm. A perfect subject. I knelt, placed my hands gently along its ribs, and tried to feel the impression — the echo — the signature that death leaves behind.

The Arcane stirred, cautious and curious, as it always does. I reached down to the ground and handed a clump of dirt, intending to loosen the sinew of the skin with a vigorous rubbing of the dirt into the skin.

But something else descended.

Not a hum.

Not a whisper.

A pull.

Like a hook sinking into my ribcage and yanking forward.

My breath hitched. I tried to pull away, but the mana lines tightened around me, thick as rope. My vision sharpened to pinpoints. Soil shifted under my knees. The dirt in my hand appeared to congeal and solidify.

I quickly released the dirt onto the ground.

The mound of dirt began to move and shift, and then rose beside me, lifting like a creature waking from sleep. Pebbles rolled into its shape. Roots twisted inward like tendons knitting into place. Soil compressed into something with weight and form.

I screamed.

The construct responded.

It lurched upright — crude, uneven, its “face” little more than a suggestion of hollows and ridges. But it looked at me. The mana tether between us pulsed like a living nerve.

I scrambled backward, tripping over a root. The construct staggered forward, reaching toward me with an arm that shed clumps of earth with every movement.

I tried to sever the connection.

I couldn’t.

The Arcane was in control — not me.

The air thickened. The earth beneath us trembled, answering some instinctual command I had never given. I could feel the mana lines threading through the soil, binding it, shaping it, forcing structure into formlessness.

This was Quicken Earth.

Raw.

Unbidden.

Uncontrolled.

“Stop!” I shouted — at myself, at the construct, at the mana itself.

And miraculously… it did.

The connection collapsed, as though the mana suddenly lost interest. The construct sagged. Its spine of packed dirt crumbled. Pebbles fell from its limbs. Within seconds, it collapsed into an inert mound.

The forest was silent.

I sat there shaking, covered in dirt and sweat and my own fear. My hands tingled with the aftershock of mana that was never mine to command.

This was not Thanatology.

Not study.

Not understanding.

This was creation.

Synthetic.

Instinctive.

Uncontrolled. Zamidren warned that the mana would test me. That the Arcane is clever, mischievous even — a current that will carry you away if you do not learn to swim with intention.

Zamidren warned that the mana would test me. That the Arcane is clever, mischievous even — a current that will carry you away if you do not learn to swim with intention.

Today, it nearly drowned me.

And yet…

When the construct looked at me —

really looked at me —

a part of me felt something frightening.

Recognition.

Not of the construct, but of myself.

What am I becoming?

And why does a small, terrible piece of me want to feel that power again?

— S. Mahlored

“The Edges of Myself”

Written the morning of the 1st day of the 6th month of Arhat the Fire Lion in the year of the Emerald Dolphin, 355 years after the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

Something is wrong.

Not with the stone — I’ve come to accept its presence, its humming, the subtle vertigo that comes when it pulses. Not even with the way animals watch me differently now. Not fear… not curiosity… something assessing.

What’s wrong is me.

Today, I forgot Talia’s face.

Not all of it. Not forever. But I was boiling water for tea — the bitter herbs I found near a stream — and I looked at the rippling reflection. I thought of her, as I do every day. But the image that came to mind wasn’t quite right. Her eyes were the wrong color. Her smile too wide. I corrected it, but the mistake lingers like a bruise on my memory.

She was the reason for all of this.

How can I forget even a thread of her?

I tried to recite the sound of her laugh. I can picture her leaning back on the bridge near the Shard river, sunlight in her hair. But the sound — the warmth behind it — felt distant, like something I borrowed instead of lived.

The obsidian pulsed then.

I don’t think that was coincidence.

I’ve also noticed a new sensation: my reactions come a fraction of a second too late, as though my thoughts have to pass through some unseen filter before reaching my limbs. Earlier, I cut my thumb while trimming a branch for a walking stick. I watched the blood bead — bright, familiar, comforting — but I felt the pain in a slow bloom, almost detached, like it belonged to someone else.

My body is still mine.

My mind is still… mostly mine.

But the edges are softening.

I worry that the stone is not simply sitting on my skin; it is sinking into me. Replacing something. Overwriting something.

Tonight, as I ate, I realized I’d been sitting in the same position for nearly an hour, staring at nothing. The fire burned low. The night creatures had gone quiet, watching me with those reflective eyes from between the trees.

When I finally moved, it felt like waking from someone else’s dream.

And gods help me… there was a moment I felt whole in that stillness.

As though the quiet inside my head was not absence, but alignment.

What am I aligning with?

Who am I becoming?

The old woman said the Work would find me.

She never said the Work wouldn’t take something in return.

I used to fear death.

Then I feared being forgotten.

Now I fear something far worse:

Being rewritten.

If I lose Talia’s face again — if I lose the memory of why I seek the truth — then what remains of me?

And whose thoughts will be left in the spaces I forget?

— S. Mahlored