Through the howling wind and driving rain, you press onward. Tree limbs lash at your face and mud slips beneath your boots. Thunder rumbles overhead and the only illumination is from stark jolts of white lightning that crash around you. You are at your limit when the blood rain begins again. Something is different this time though. As the storm continues, you are not in 'the other place', you find you are still in the real world. This is a bad omen. Emerging from the trees behind you, the Blood Fiend strides. The fiend is here, in the real world! Somehow it has clawed its way into reality, there is no veil between you now. It has become more powerful, larger, as if drawing strength from the storm itself.

You are exhausted, but you know you have only one option. You break formation and run.

Past tree after tree you charge, the Blood Fiend hot on your heels. It shows no sign of tiring, all you have done is bought yourself time. Suddenly, the treeline appears and you burst into a familiar circle of clear ground. You have reached Refuge, the eye of the storm. Turning, you see the Blood Fiend advance behind you. It raises a thick claw made from rolling droplets of blood and swings it toward your face. Then the Blood Fiend collapses as its form crosses the edge of the clearing. Whatever malefice animates the thing ceases, and thousands of droplets of blood fall to the ground, forming just another pool of blood. You blink in shock, it seems the fiend had been a product of the storm or whoever wields it. Bound under its shadow, here at the eye of the storm, it lost its grip on reality.

You are not out of the woods yet. Turning back to the village, you see the sight of swirling shadows and blood whirling in a vortex around the structure in the heart of Refuge. The storm's source. Drawing weapons you stalk toward the center.

Keeping clear of any line of sight, you press your backs to one of the many wooden houses gathered around the village's heart. The last time you were here an ancient spider queen tried to eat you. Now you have to deal with a blood storm. If you survive this, you vow to yourself to burn this place to the ground and rid the world of its taint once and for all.

You begin to signal a flanking maneuver when a voice emerges from the vortex. "Come marked ones, he awaits." Whoever is responsible for the storm knows who you are. They know you are here. With the element of surprise lost, you emerge from the shadow of the building to an unholy sight.

Hundreds of corpses lay in concentric circles all facing inward. As you look on in horror, you see the blood draining from them in a red mist, curling through the air to be deposited inside an abomination. The resurrected corpse of the Scar Tribe Chieftain. Horribly disfigured, his bloated proportions are twisted and corrupted. One of his arms has been warped into a single great claw and boney spikes jut from his back. You realize that what you are seeing resembles the Blood Fiend that had been stalking you through the storm. Had it been the Chieftain that hunted you? A red glow lights his eyes and behind him you can see the Shaman you battled in the Scar Tribe village. Somehow she had survived the conflagration, brought the Chieftain's body here and now, using the blood of an entire village, had brought back this creature from the dead. You have no idea how it was done, but you do know why. Revenge… the sensation had permeated every encounter with the Blood Fiend. The Shaman had followed you, known you would return through Refuge and laid her trap. The storm, 'the other place', this abomination, all an embodiment of one unfulfilled desire to finish what was started. To see you dead.

The Chieftain roars, and from the corner of your eyes you see the shadows of the corpses elongate. Hands and the shapes of mouths, stretch out around the Shaman and the Chieftain, ignoring them to seek you out. Even the shadows bend to the Shaman's will. It will take fire and fury to finish this task. Sparking amber torches you roar your own battle cry.

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