The stories about the crypts were true. I found the monastery. Here, the dead are stacked deeper than the roots of the mountains themselves. The silence is deafening… almost sacred. But I hear no prayers spoken by the monks. Only the rats keep their rabid faith to the plague.

While villages withered into graveyards under the merciless scythe of pestilence, the monks were safely hidden away. Whispers of something nefarious happening within these walls spread through our valleys like smoke.

The further I go, the thicker the swarm becomes. Yet not a single rodent dares to sink its teeth upon my flesh. They part around my steps as though they guide me, driven by an unseen will.

And there I see it, resting in a dead monk’s hands. The book the monks have been working on, its pages marked with symbols older than the Empire itself.  He clenched to it with all his strength even after death, while the rats fed on his rotting carcass.

As I reach to grab it, I feel a freezing wind sweeping through the crypts. Like a hivemind, the pale spectres of the dead brothers were alerted by my presence.

I must escape. Still, the rats do not touch me…