Khalin, asleep in a chair in his stone house, began to shudder. His heart began to quicken as the images flowing through his mind began to focus in their clarity.

The old man placed himself in the center of the road. He knew the speeding traveler would come this way. And, as if on cue, a young man rounded the bend in the road, coming into plain sight. And yet he did not seem to pay heed to the old man. More than that, he seemed not even to see him. His path was taking him straight into the old man -- if he did not dart to either side, he would surely plow through the other. Yet the old man stood there, unconcerned.

A bead of nervous sweat made its way down Khalin's forehead. Tension made its way into his hands, and even in his sleeping state his knuckles turned bright as he gripped the armrests of the chair.

At the last moment before impact, the old man raised a hand and held it open-palmed, as if to motion for the younger man to stop. As he did, a ripple of energy surged outward and the young man stopped dead in his tracks, falling backward as if he had hit a brick wall. Only now did his face reveal the shock of what should have been obvious -- there was an impossibly old man standing in front of him, where, an instant before, he thought there had been nothing.

Khalin physically jolted with alarm, immediately waking. He now sat upright in his chair, wide-eyed and stunned. Yet, he only saw the slightest afterimages of his home. Instead, the vision continued before him...

"I am traveling under orders of the King himself," the young man managed as he began scuttling backwards on the dusty road. He held his satchel close to him as he gained distance between himself and this mysterious old man.

"Did you not hear me?!?" The young man's voice cracked. He was utterly terrified by this presence before him. He moved backwards again on his palms and elbows. "I am a courier traveling under orders from Lord British!" He rose again, but now stood with his guard up, brandishing a small dagger.

"Nau..." Khalin managed only a raspy plea aimed at the images before him, and then his voice was silenced by terror. He was not accustomed to the sensation, and he could not explain the grip that this vision had upon him.

The old man drew his blade -- a long, slender thing that looked sleek and white. The young man stared for a moment, trying to devise a strategy where he might escape with his life. Then, he moved.

The young man flailed his parcel towards the elder, striking him square in the jaw and sending his upraised blade swinging wide. The satchel opened midway through the swing, spilling scrolls out onto the road. The young man followed through by leaping forward and thrusting his dagger deep into the old man's chest. The young man stood horrified when the elder did not fall.

Khalin's heart nearly stopped. His eyes were dry and aching, but he could not shut them. His voice strained to make a noise, but the intensity of this vision had muted him utterly. He knew what would happen next.

The old man stared at the boy for just an instant, reveling in the unbridled terror in his eyes. And then, with a swift strike, he slid his blade into the younger's midsection, pushing it upward until the very tip of it penetrated the skin at the back of the courier's neck.

Khalin fell to his knees, the sparse details of his room finally coming into focus. He breathed heavily, and felt his muscles ache. On the floor he knelt, stunned for what seemed like hours, trying to understand the vision...

He did not return to sleep. He could hear the faint wailing of disquieted spirits in the Crypts which were his neighbors. Then, sometime before dawn, he made his way into the depths of those Crypts, so that he might teach them silence.

The red-haired man stood over that corpse now, removing his blade from the body. He opened one of the scrolls and glanced at the message. On it was a transcript of Lord British's warning to the people of Trinsic, ordering those people to flee their city. He had seen several couriers headed south along this road over the past few days. He had killed some of them; he had allowed some to continue undisturbed. And all the while he had waited. Now the man ran a rough hand over his deep red beard, contemplating his next course of action.

He knew, of course, that there would be many new victims as refugees began to pour out of Trinsic to the south — some had already begun the exodus. But his prize lay elsewhere. And perhaps now, amidst the confusion that was enveloping the realm, the time had come to seize it.

He rolled the scroll again and placed it in the courier's pack, and then discarded the lot of them next to the young courier's corpse. He knelt down to clean the blood from his blade, then sheathed it at his side. He closed his eyes for a moment, and with a few arcane gestures, his form began to shimmer. Then, as quickly as he had appeared before the startled courier, he vanished from sight.

A lone pair of disembodied footprints made their way through the forest, heading north towards the prize...