Alastair Thalion Greenvale had buried soldiers, vassals, and enemies. He had watched men die on campaign trails and in the halls of castles that changed hands at swordpoint, and the part of him that processed death had long since calloused over.
That callous did not cover this.
His wife's body lay crooked on the mattress beside him with her neck folded at the angle his daughter had left it.
The sheets beneath her were dark with what she had voided in her final seconds, and the face he had kissed goodnight not an hour ago stared at the ceiling, unseeing, lids half-parted in the permanent way of the dead.
He had failed to protect her. He had failed to see the threat, failed to fight through the enchantment in his chest, failed to do anything beyond wheeze her killer's name while the life was wrung out of her. The Duke of Greenvale, Level 74, had lain on his own pillow and watched his wife die at the hands of a ghost.
