The dead and dying create tortuous avenues through the afterworld, where the grasping hands of the archangels reach out towards him for salvation in their time of need and how their messengers whinny pitifully through mouthfuls of phantasmal blood they cough up out of collapsed lungs. They’re in search of something it cannot give them and he is cruel to deny them comfort on their ceaseless deathbeds, but he wades through their grabbing hands like they were but mere puddles. It cannot help them, just as they cannot help him.

In the absence of his kindness, Terrence takes pity on them and says a few words over his dying brethren. There is an urge to tell him that these creatures are not real, that they will not benefit from his prayers, but it thinks there’s been enough cruelty in the kingdom today that he can allow Terrence this one thing. They would say the same of him; Wraith would not benefit from your prayer, nor would it find peace in the eternal afterlife, and many feared that he’d become so interwoven with the kingdom that it would be destined to become a permanent feature of it, much like the haunts that roam the moor.

“Have you seen these before?” Terrence calls from behind him and the question is so jarring that it compels him to stop.

There is an uncomfortable breeze that whips through the moor, out of place for something buried this deep within the kingdom, and it brings with it the gentle flutter of cloth. It comes from a tapestry, torn almost beyond recognition, that’s tied to the broken end of a spear wedged deep into the skull of a courser. It is the color of charcoal; the edges are decorated with frayed gold that accent the crimson pentacle branded in the middle of it.

“Describe it to me,” he rasps, for he cannot see it.

“They’re everywhere,” Terrence explains. “It’s a pair of coursers battling it out. They look like they’re about to tear each other's heads off!”

Though he doesn’t know the pictograph’s true meaning, he imagines that these coursers are locked in an eternal battle they will never be free of. They’re caught in the middle of destruction, and once one has been vanquished, they will be at peace once more until another fills the void. They are destined to do this forever. To be destroyed and be reborn again.

An ouroboros.