"Ni'cam solrok dancul'rae. Azbel tre'han solkor'vae. Nenzril jaraen dazir'fae. Zacanalurae!"

Wind whipped around the room, snuffing candles and sending candelabras to the floor with brazen crashes. Ashes and dust rose into the air, swirling about edges and settling, only to whip once more into the air, carried on the whistling wind. Voices whispered softly, speaking in a language dead millennia ago, a language of shadows and secrets and the darkest night.

Invisible hands caressed his shoulders, the wind, or perhaps the being itself, plucking at his robes, a tendril sliding gently over his throat.

"You summon... the past that should remain..." the wind whispered, a soft echo tracing the words about the small room, "Why.. do you summon... that which has been sealed..."

"Sealed unjustly! I come to correct a wrong, which was done ages ago to you and your kind."

A breathy sigh echoed through the room, sending the wind into a short frenzy of motion once again, the whispers growing louder, stronger about him, pale forms flitting about in the corner of his eyes.

And before him, the creature began to materialize, all sapphire eyes and midnight hair and pale, pale skin the silver blue of moonlight on water. The delicate hand traced a cool path down his neck, before lifting away, leaving a lingering chill.

"Your lust for power... echoes strongly in your mind. I... am no one's to control."

He took a step back, only to have a second set of hands wrap about his body, the deadly chill beginning to slip past his robes and spells, into his body, into his soul. The hands about his chest as silver pale as the first, glittering like ice in the glow of released souls. Ice blue eyes gazed down upon him, a strand of midnight hair cutting through one, tickling his forehead lightly with the very tip of the strand.

"You... are as foolish as those who bound us here," the second whispered, "in that you deal with the undealable. Yet... they at least... had the wisdom to bind, not release."

There was no escape, no hope of salvation, as the chill set its fangs within his soul, his body falling lifeless to the floor amidst the broken candles and the shattered candelabras and the thick dust that yet swirled on a wind with no earthly origin.

And two shapes, tall and delicate and unearthly in their movements, glided from the sealed room, closing the door gently behind them without setting a hand upon the broken handle. The soft click of the latch echoed like a shout, in the still and lifeless and long forgot castle of an era that had ceased to exist long before the humans had come unto their own.

Much remained to be done, but first was the strange, nagging call that rested in the back of their minds, like one of their own, yet not, flavored strangely. A call they could neither resist nor deny, a call that drew them offworld, offrealm, away from the weakened calls of their own, for a time.

But nothing would keep them from reclaiming their destiny.

Nothing would keep them from rebuilding the Aeon of Shadows.