PROLOGUE
They came from seemingly nowhere. As Erinn undergoes the long nights written about in the Revelations of the Black Moon, another outsider descends of her own free will. Though she displays immense power like that of a Milletian, her strength is more different, more alien than any Milletian is used to. Unlike the Milletians, she doesn't pass through the Soul Stream, either. The world doesn't even feel her presence when she arrives. Like a ghost, she walks the world over, without notice, until she comes to a frigid place that attracts her. Where the Black Moon makes waves of notice, the Pale Sun doesn't even utter a mere rumor…
It seemed like a moment ago that Ruairi's life flashed before his eyes, when he woke up to a cold everything. When his sight finally returned, he noticed his surroundings, which were almost completely covered in ice. Taking a moment to sit up properly, Ruairi looks down at himself and notices that he no longer has the Milletian traits; he's not even a Dark Knight anymore. Shocked to see that he's back in the armor he once had when he was travelling with Tarlach and Mari, Ruairi tries to get up, only to slip on the ice and fall back down. A voice speaks out as he looks up. "You must be getting pretty tired of waking up like this…"
Looking around, Ruairi sees that he's not alone in that frigid place, resembling Par Ruins. A young woman, whose dark skin complemented the pale ice around them, stood before him at the only gateway out of the room. Wearing the Cores' Thief suit and Knee-high boots, her outfit looked out of place for such a cold environment. Her black hair goes just past her shoulders, covering her left eye. She was staring down at Ruairi with her light blue eyes, arms crossed, and showing little emotion for his predicament.
Ruairi was quick to the obvious questions: where he was, how he got there, and who this girl was. Despite looking uninterested in answering him, she starts from the beginning. "First, you ought to be thankful that I pulled you out of the Plane of Death. Then again, it would have been more merciful if I hadn't. Since you are, though, that means you get to watch the fallout of your foolish ritual, as it prepares to set Erinn ablaze." Angered, Ruairi gets up to tell her off, only to slip on the ice again. It takes a moment to set in, before he realizes that his sacrifice during the ritual worked, and Erinn has been opened up to outsiders other than Milletians. By the same token, though, that also means that the same outsiders Ruairi hoped would do battle against the gods might also not have Erinn's best interests in mind. And being "pulled out of the Plane of Death" means that she had the power to bring Ruairi back to life; a necromancer. He barely had time to actually think about it before she continued.
"Second, I'm the one who's going to make sure you don't bring any more trouble on yourself than you already have. Which means recommending that you don't try to act all 'heroic' and make everything worse. You ought to be smart enough by now to know what'll happen if you even try." An upsetting answer, but one that Ruairi forced himself to consider. There was indeed merit to the things she told him, but that still created more questions that she would have to answer, sooner or later. For now, with most of his abilities gone, Ruairi would have to settle with the answers he was getting, for what they're worth. Plus, without any knowledge of where he even was, escaping would be a difficult tour de force of its own.
The woman turns away as if to leave, and she hasn't even mentioned her name yet. Ignoring Ruairi's demand to know who she was, she instead continues where she left off. "Third, as for where you are right now," she says as she turns back to look at him, her eyes beginning to glow.
"This… is my Frozen Demesne."