Alexis dreams of being in a vast, crumbling library beneath the earth. The shelves stretch into darkness filled with books bound in skin and ash. In the silence, a voice whispers from a pulsing tone with a crackled black cover. He reads it. The runes speak out that this is the truth of the crone. Alexis opens it only to find his own handwriting, cataloging secrets yet not yet learned. As he reads it, the ink bleeds from the page and forms the face of Avv. But her features seem to be rotting in front of him. Something is wrong. Alexis gets the feeling that he has abandoned something. The voice of the crone distorts. Bandages begin wrapping around Alexis’ face, blinding him. He now feels like he’s being dragged through the aisles by spectral librarians, chanting, “She’s corrupted and so are you.”

Alexis awakes with dried blood on his nose and a sentence in his mind “Beware the king, his tomb is empty, for he had made his pact.”