He sat in the dim light of the study; a ruminating figure pondering on the events of his life, and those that had led him here. To this damnable domain of horror, where veritable nightmares stalked the world to seek flesh and minds to rend.

The sun even now dipped beyond the horizon, the dying light casting a hellish glow on his ancestral home which he had once found soothing and warm. Now, tenebrous and eerie. Up on the great hill, beyond the great ruins of the home he had been raised within sat his Grandfather's manor house, its skeletal profile mocking him in his tenuous triumph. He glared with all the baleful malice he could muster at that awful place, willing it to dust, and finding himself childishly disappointed that it lingered still.

And it would linger. Now and forevermore.

The ghosts that paced the halls of his former home had been driven out. The monstrosities that haunted the ancient warrens had been put to the sword. The creatures that lurked within the old cove had been purged. And the devils that stalked the overgrown weald were torched. All had been terrible. Beasts and madmen and unnameable abominations born of unthinkable excess and horrible imagination.

And yet all paled to the thing beneath his home.

And the cruel truth that had been revealed to him.

Warrior he was not, yet he felt it was his responsibility to accompany the band on that final mission. With bated breath, an ill-kept flintlock and a sabre he had never once possessed the will to even lift, and a final, desperate prayer for his family, he ventured down. Beyond the twisted and warped wrought iron gate shaped by minds freed the shackles of sanity. Deep into the tunnels beneath the manor where rock and metal gave way to flesh and other things that offended the eyes and assaulted the senses.

Finally, they arrived.

While all others held the monstrous horde of abominable lunatics and impossible creatures at bay, he had ventured forth into the heart of the seething corruption with those faithful four who had accompanied him to his ancestral home from the very beginning: Reynauld; level-headed and stalwart. Dismas; cunning and vigorous. Junia; keen-eyed and courageous. And, last but not least, Bellecote; quick-witted and focused.

That they were all now gone—dead or vanished to parts unknown—saddened him more than anyone still inhabiting this dismal place would ever know. They had been the closest he had to true friends in his quest to right the innumerable wrongs of his ancestor.

He shivered, a hand reaching up to clutch at his face as if that simple gesture might steady his nerves for the recollection of awful memory.

He did not know what the others had seen and fought, but he had been startled to be greeted by the vaguest interpretation of his ancestor. He had looked the very spitting image of the last time he had laid eyes upon the man: tall and imposing with strong, aquiline features, his beard and moustache impeccably well-trimmed and a full head of hair still possessed of a vaguely youthful and dark lustre.

And while the others had fought to protect him, his grandfather had shared with him the terrible truth that he had come to know. Only once the message had been hammered home, his eyes opened to the impossibility of his fate—and all those who shared his cursed bloodline—had he receded into nothingness and the foulness from which all corruption stemmed unveiled itself in its full and horrific glory.

He referred to it even now as the Heart of Darkness. A lame attempt to diffuse the mind-scratching terror he felt at the mere sight of it with humour, for it had indeed resembled that vital yet fragile organ that was universal to all sentient life.

There was nothing fragile about the Heart they were there to stop, however.

The lash of some great tongue-like protrusion had almost felled Reynauld with one strike; his armour rent asunder by the mere force of the strike. A noxious cloud of the foulest miasma spewed from the same orifice that spawned the limb that cast Reynauld to the ground felled Bellecoat, who screamed as she reached for the vials of medicine within her robes even as her flesh was eaten away before her very eyes. An undulating, wordless screech caused Dismas to drop to his knees, who wept and wailed, clawing at his head with his hands with a franticness lent only to the doomed.

Through it all, Junia had kept chanting, her voice resolute. She all but screamed her defiance at the great terror and her example lent strength and courage to the others.

And to himself.

Despite his absolute and terrible clarity at the actions of the brave men and women who fought that day, he only vaguely recalled his own actions. There was a recollection of a hand tightening around the grip of a sword; of a purpose-filled stride towards an abhorrent blackness, and a savage cry born of fear, rage, and hopelessness.

A figure—an impossible shape that he told himself didn't resemble anyone or anything—cresting the impossible thing, turned to regard him, a multitude of eyes deeper and more pitch black than the most wretched abyss focused upon his charging form. A leap. A strike.

And then a screech that had shattered his entire world. There was a shriek of such length and terror it numbed him. It had sounded like Junia but he couldn't be sure.

And then the darkness had claimed him.

He awoke on the outskirts of the hamlet, the few weary and battered survivors trudging back to the flimsy safety it offered. Of the four who he had accompanied to the depths of that darkest and most terrible dungeon, there was no sign. All anyone would tell him was that the nameless hordes had, to a monstrosity, fallen upon each other in an orgy of bloodletting. There was not a single one left, now, and the grotesque flesh walls of the deep were receding. Dying.

Victory, then, all had decided.

He only wished he could share in their jubilations.

He held his head in his hands and wept, cursing this place, cursing his ancestor, cursing fate itself for the barbarous hand it dealt him, and all who would ever be of his lineage. Never again would he know true peace, and his heart ached as he pondered on his son and daughter, still in the care of his wife's parents many leagues away. Would this cycle of damnation sweep one of them up too before his time was done? Or would it strike their own children? The mere thought of his children being forced to confront the terror in the depths and cursed with this awful truth threatened to still his heart then and there.

And yet…

He paused, sniffling, and dabbled at his cheeks to dry the tears that flowed.

The Heart would bring about the end of the world. It seemed its mere purpose was to do just that—to die and be reborn with the alignment of the stars to threaten all life on this world once more. It could not be killed. Each death, every soul sent screaming into the afterlife only appeared to strengthen its eldritch power, and the cycle would, in time, end only in one way.

Or would it?

The Heart was corruptive malevolence made manifest, a vision of the purest evil he could ever conceive of…

…and yet they had beaten it.

Five individuals.

Men.

Women.

Humans.

They had provided a mere lull in the grind toward the inevitable doom of the world. But delayed it they had all the same. For all the taunts of his ancestor, the festering Heart was not invulnerable.

Gradually at first, but with increasing speed as the cogs in his mind began to turn, a plan began to formulate. He would need money, and influence. The former, thankfully, even after having given the surviving adventurers their well-deserved payment—or those who would accept it, anyway—was in plentiful supply. It paled in comparison to the fortune which had, like his family name, once been all but limitless in scope, but it would serve for the immediate future, and surely now the grounds were scoured of monstrous influence he could send for more scavenging parties to find what treasures had been left behind.

Only…

He wrestled with his thoughts; with his conscience. Could he do it? Could he truly consign his entire familial line to damnation for a world that may not even deserve salvation? He returned once more to the thought of his ancestor, and all he had revealed.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he thought of his beautiful, adoring wife. His energetic, hearty son. His inquisitive, intelligent daughter. They would despise him for this.

But they would understand in time.

They had to.

And so, with his choice made, the Heir to the Darkest estate opened a drawer in his desk and retrieved paper, one of many unused envelopes, and a stamp. He closed the drawer and opened another smaller drawer further down, fetching from it a pot of ink, and a quill.

For a time, he did nothing but stare down at that which would, in an infinitesimal span of time, doom his entire family to madness or death. Or both. He took a breath to steady his nerves, rolled his shoulders and shook out the stiffness in his neck.

And began to write…