Upon our arrival at Deraata, we went straight to the rendevous point where that was prepared to meet Vanna, Clode and their companion, we carried a large bundle between us, which we hid under our cloaks, Nia stood near the entrance, leaning on a wall, inspecting every movement made by everyone inside the tavern, and to protect me in case an unsound attempt at double-crossing occurs. I sat alone on a table, tucked away in a cozy nook, glancing attentively back and forth, to the window and to Nia, anticipating the moment three tall figures would walk in line through the narrow front door. No one showed up until half an hour later, a man, of warrior-like build, dressed in dark garments, everything about him spoke of being a rogue, he looked aged, even through the cloak concealing his face with long hair, tied in a ponytail, wielding a regal looking sword on his belt, he must be feeling confident in his proficiency with the blade if he's showcasing such a fine item. He slowly made his way into the tavern, pushing the drunkards with his shoulders as he walked showing minimal effort, his legs moved with the stiffness of a soldier marching with every step he took, every gesture, was deliberate and precise, he seemed like a seasoned warrior, not afraid to make enemies out of the people around him.

He sat at the opposing side of my table, without saying a word, a few seconds went by.

"Umm" I muttered, afraid to disrupt his thoughts, waiting for him to introduce himself and break the cold silence that filled the room, I didn't get what I expected.

He looked at me, his eyes were brown and emotionless, yet piercing with the sharpness of a dagger and his voice was deep and raspy, emmanating a tone of imperative commandment.

"Are you Lai?" he Inquired with a tone that demanded a quick response.

I nodded, trying hard to maintain some kind of composure.

"Are you here in behest of the lucky ace?" I inquired back, lucky ace was the code name we would use at the transaction site in order to protect the integrity of the deal, in the case we would require an intermediary to complete it for us.

"Yes," he confirmed.

I acted promptly as he did not look like the kind of person to enjoy some idle talk at a negotiation table and made the signal to Nia that the transaction was to be completed, but the man raised his hand urging me to stop with a detached gesture on his face as he took a black piece of cloth hiding something underneath from inside his garments, and gave it to me.

"Don't react" he said to me before letting go of the wet piece. I waited for Nia to sit next to me before uncovering the object. I lifted the layers of cloth unable to control the shaky feeling hand and spine, in hesitation of what the old man had just warned me about.

"Is this a joke?! Some sort of macabre symbolism meant to scare us?!, are you here to make the deal yes or not?!" Nia shouted alerting everyone around us of our presence, with a tone disbelief of the ingenuity of the old man, leaning closer to him.

The object was a severed hand, covered in blood and attached by only its nail to a black leather strip, two fingers missing, thumb and ring finger, and not freshly cut from it's owner judging by the minimal bleeding and lack of rigor mortis.

Still in dismay by the unsavory surprise and taking it for some kind of threat i instinctively reached for my blade before the realization hit me.

"Nia, wait!" I yelled over the din she was making, leaning my head to take a closer look in and signaling at the fingers on the hand that laid flat on the table, leaving a wet bloody and bloody mess that was oozing from drenched piece of cloth below it, in an attempt to make her observe again, this time more precisely.

"Do you see?".

She stared, longer this time, letting her thoughts sink in.

"That finger..." she murmured in a somber tone, confirming my previous line of thought.

It was Vannas hand, endorsed by the marks at the tips of the middle and index finger characteristic of an archer. She took the hand from me, and started to examine the blood stains on it, and the faint red color on the skin beneath;

"You'll have to excuse me for breaking it down to ya in such gruesome fashion, but i know you wouldn't have believed me otherwise, and i'm sorry i didn't give you a heads-up, but considering you recognized it now i'm sure you are who you say" the old man stated firmly.

I nodded, unable to find words to express how i felt in such a short period of time.

"We are willing to pay half the agreed price, but we need to know just what the hell happened" I asked, hoping to get some answers as quickly as possible.

"I will tell you my side of the story" he replied in a calm manner, "Follow me".

He stood from his chair and urged us to follow him through the exit to a dark alley, barely lit, two blocks away from the tavern, where two horses where tied to a medium sized wagon, covered in wool blanket, there was a foul smell emanating from it, and it didn't take a much wit to guess what was lying underneath it.

"You're going to tell us everything you know about this incident in the next few minutes" I told him with a serious gaze.

"Well...i am not one for small talk either..." he began, "the night of that incident i received Lord Vanna at my doorstep very late at night, which is quite unusual, she was accompained by two other individuals of which i knew not much about, i let the three of them inside and offered them some drinks, we made some talk until they finally declared the intent of their visit, they wanted passage into the old Hamlet for a lucrative job, they said, and offered me a portion of the payment in case i accepted. At first, i rejected, as it was not my usual practice, anything beyond the wall is usually not worth the coin, however, the man in front, he called himself Corin, very eloquent fellow indeed..." He took another deep breath, and continued. "Corin claimed to be a representative of the Order of the Broken Eye, and all the asked of me was to show them way into the faint and dilapidated path that leads to the entrance of the ruins".

The old man seemed uneasy, but he continued nonetheless. "The next night we made our way beyond the wall, i showed them where the path was located and left them there with instructions to come back once they had reached the place. The following morning, the small lass acompanying them, Astias, returned with a single body in tow, wrapped in cloths, and she told me that they had lost Vanna in a fight with Corin, and that he had got lost somewhere in the woods"

"That's all you know?" Nia asked him suspiciously.

"I left the girl back at my place, she seemed traumatized enough and didn't say much, but you can try questioning her if you want, i'm positive you'll get more information than what i already gave you" he stated firmly.

"Why would someone go out of their way to kill their trusted partner in crime?" I inquired, attempting to discern the truth of events that took place back there.

He simply shrugged his arms, avoiding my question, it seemed simple enough for the three of us to deduce that Corin betrayed them and made away with the loot in hand.

However, it was still hard to imagine how a trained assassin such as Vanna would fall off the perch so easily, a knife to the heart? really?, it seemed to me like something out of an amateur story meant to rid of the side character without much effort to move the plot forward, i left the thought running quietly at the back of my head as made our way to the old man's place to interogate Astias.

The old man's place stood somewhere in the higher part of Deraata, he had acquired his dwelling through an inheritance, apparently. We were greeted by a small house with a modest courtyard in which a few old tools hung on a line, except for the hand carved entry at the entrance that read MOMENTO MORI, it looked like any other house in the town, i but it was the last time i would see any semblance of normality here.

"The name's Hassan by the way" he added as he struggled to place the keys on the door.

Nia placed her belongings politely on the floor near the entrance as she entered the room, i followed close behind, trying to remain unnoticed.

"Astia! I've arrived, some acquaintances of Vanna and Corin are here, they want to ask you a few questions!" Hassan exclaimed, the girl was probably hiding somewhere in the rooms on the second floor.

No one answered, and a moment later Hassan called for her again, this time making his way up the stairs to go look for her, we followed behind.

At last we came across the young woman lying flat on the bed, she had fallen asleep it seems and her breathing was heavy, it seemed that she hadn't slept well, her eyes were bloodshot and bags, but more remarkable, were the cryptic scribbles decorating the wall around her, filling up the white walls, overlapping one another, but a recurring symbol could was found in them as if a madman had written them with ink and his own hands.

"What do they mean?"

I grabbed a notebook from my pouch, something with ink and began sketching the symbol on the wall. Disturbing confusion filled the room, no one knew what it was or why it was there, a strange and disturbing sight i could not help but feel uneasy with. On the outside, it looked like nothing more than gibberish, but looking through the lines, we all knew this had some relationship with what had happened back at the hamlet.

Hassan took a few steps forward towards the young woman, "Wake up! Wake Up!" he shouted as he shook her shoulder vigorously, however his efforts went fruitless.

It was then that I decided to step in and tried to shake her as well. My actions also proved useless, the young woman was clearly in deep slumber, it seemed she was dreaming of a something...

Even if she woke up however, the Nearsighted mind must have taken a hold of her memories by now, she would not be able to explain how the events took place.

As the sun began sinking beneath the skyline, we decided to help Hassan clean the markings on the wall, he offered us to stay the night at his place if we wished, and for two lingering hours, not a single word was spoken of what had just happened.

At first, i didn't want to accept it, but the reality looked ever more clear....if we wished to know what happened to Vanna and Asttia, and what those symbols meant, we had no other option but to make our way to Daheidas ourselves. By now, consequentialy, the idea seemed too absurd, so i decided to let Nia reach my same conclusion before disclosing the plan of action to her.

The sky was dark now and we rested at Hassan's place, meanwhile, in a mannerly and welcome show of hospitality as is customary practice in Deraata, he prepared stew for us to eat over a fire he lit on the yard.

We talked a bit about the past and home, with a bit of hope that we would get over with this soon, she didn't elaborate much further, and neither did I. The silence was awkward at best.

After an hour or so of talking about rambling about our old occurences, telling stories and laughing with the company of a good drink in hand, in an attempt to forget the distract ourselves disastrous turn of events that had occured, the conversation started to predictably circle back and forth into the academia and Stonelock related affairs, as the humoristic affliction of alcohol faded, we dwelled on the topic of the Nearsighted Mind effect for a while, and Nia asked interesting questions about the methods and practices used to control and treat it that i learned back at the Academia.

The Academia of Prylock, located in city of Prylock the industrialized west, is the place where the magic, quite literally, happens, it is in the heart of one of the biggest civilizations standing in the world and the populate consists mainly of Scholars, Arcane practicioners, Historians, and all related to similar Intelectual endeavors, many cures, solutions, inventions and theories are brought from the obscure mind of the many outstanding individuals to the surface here, intended to be of use to the world as a greater whole. The Nearsighted mind effect however, was a controversial topic, not openely discussed by many, as it involved substantial parts of what makes up the theological basis of popular religions and widespread beliefs around the world, for a long time spreading thousands of years, any sort of experimentation or study of the phenomena was forbidden and severely punished against those who wished not to obey with the limitations of their curiosity. This didn't particularly interfere with the industrious-minded and observant intelectuals of that time, of course, who saw in it more than just a mere ill-psychotic state of the mind that could be dragged down with artificial infusion or crafty brew, they saw a trace or revelation that a hidden play might be happening behind the curtains of reality.

The name was a recent acquisition, but the phenomena had it's first appereance almost 10 millenia ago, be it through folk songs, poems, myths, legends or memoirs originating from the civilizations that existed before the wall, whoses remnants and traditions we have deliberately choose to forget, locking them away behind a protective wall, we inhabitants of the present era, as to avoid commiting the same mistakes that led them down to their seemingly abrupt end. These civilizations allured the nearsigthed mind to be the volition of Qorudos, meaning god, or Zarabin, meaning the one who oversees in a different tongue, ancient myths of seemingly distant geographical root that ilustrate a very similar image, originating almost simultaneously in multiple locations in this world, of a god above creation, that from the midsts or the stars descended unto the mortal world on a time before life ever saw the shine of light, to lay dormant in it's somnolent silence for eons to come. It is unknown whether these civilizations shared a common history or not, but all of them share a very interesting trait: each and every civilization that has been studied, has shown signs of a Nearsighted Mind effect that took over the minds of its people to create mass psychotic outbreaks that plunged even the most important and powerful cities into the edge of calamities of apocalyptic grade, leading up to the eventual cures and treatments fashioned to rid themselves of the unmerited curse that pestered their lands.