"And so Dread is gone?"
"Yes m'lord." The shadow bowed before its master.
Sitting on a throne forged from ancient rocks was a tall regal figure with long metallic steel hair that reached toward the ground. His face showed no sign of age, his eyes completely white. A golden crown encircled his forehead with a piece of onyx embedded as the centerpiece. He was dressed in regal black robes with arcane runes inscribed along the edges.
"Good," he smiled as he leaned back on his throne. "You may be off now," he gestured as the shadow bowed and skulked away into the darkness that surrounded the room.
"What was the point of freeing Dread if he was to die?" a lich muttered as he floated out of the darkness.
The skin that once hung from the bones were now all gone, leaving behind only a white skeleton frame covered by tattered remnants of cloth, the remaining exposed portion wrapped in loose white strips of cloth. Glowing eyes burned profusely in the empty sockets, a bit of magical flames danced between the fingertips.
"Patience, my dear friend," the master smiled as he closed his eyes. "Everything is going along exactly as it should." He stated as he held open his hand and a plain ragged book appeared there.
"So all is still going as expected?" the lich muttered.
Opening the book, the master stated, "Of course, what has been transcribed here can not be denied. The freeing and soon afterward death of Dread. The fall of Lina Inverse and the mysterious disappearance of her corpse. All of it has been written and all of it has transpired."
Looking away into the darkness, the lich inquired, "So who did take her body then?"
"You can't know what has yet to be told," the master replied as the lich growled.
"I believe you put too much faith into that book of yours," the lich hissed as the master simply laughed.
"Faith? You mean fate. All that has been written in this book has occurred, each event exactly as depicted and told here. The entire Kouma War had been planned out in this already. Everything that I have achieved is written in here. With each completion of an Act, the spell grows closer to completion. So it is written, so shall it be in the Play of Twilight!" the master laughed as the lich glared a bit.
"Then I presume we should move onto the next phase then?" the lich said as the master closed the book.
"Yes," he smiled as the lich turned and faded into the shadows.
Looking up as he materialized a cup of wine in his hand, the master smiled, "A toast shall we? To the rebirth of Lina Inverse as it is written." He silently laughed as he dropped the glass and let it shatter upon the cold ground below.