Sixth Comet. 984 years ago.
The Warlock wore all black, fitting, considering this was a funeral of sorts. He stood atop the highest peak in the whole realm, and despite the blizzard around him, he felt warm, he felt wrong. He looked down at his friend, motionless, draped like a discarded towel over the perfectly smooth altar. The Warlock expected his friend to get up, brush off his wounds and keep marching on like he had done three thousand times before, but this, this was final, it had to be.
"How much longer will this take?" spat the Warlock with a cold demeanour, "The Harbinger will find us shortly, and we're not exactly hidden on top of a mountain".
He rubbed his hands together for some extra warmth and trod towards the altar, glancing at his unrecognisable reflection in the teal blood that dripped down from his friend.
"When the scholars write of us, I'll make sure they emphasise how impatient you are, brother", replied The Witch, in her newly found quippy tone. Was she always this chirpy? Does she not care about the consequences of what we've done? Of what we're about to do? She looked up and studied the three giant spires, known as The Fangs, battering her pencil against her lip. The Witch flicked through her notepad, a crude leather-bound book that she'd had since her days as an unwilling mage for the Ashkar. Her eyes darted over old drawings of runes, incantations, arcane tools, and even the odd sketch of people they had met in their travels across the continents.
She paced across the perfectly circular platform, tracing the runes etched into the ground with her feet, kicking up what little snow landed on this strange, ethereal disc. They were thousands of feet up amidst the clouds, and yet the snow that beat the mountain air around them seemed not to dare come close to the spires or the platform, almost like it was avoiding something.
"I think" The Witch finally said "we need to lash our souls to two of the spires, and then release his seal, and ride it to the aether," she said whilst glancing at the two northern most spires, then angling her head towards the The Warrior - their friend - still laying motionless on the smooth stone slab. "You think?" The warlock retorted, hoping for a firmer reply "You know if we even get one part of this wrong we will cease to exist, our souls would be extinguished! Bah! We might as well just jump into the gaping maw of the Abyssal Serpent" he was getting more tired and, well honestly, quite fed up. He ran his gloved hand through his messy locks of ashen white hair, dotted with shifting swirls of black and purples. It felt like straw. How long since I've bathed? He knew it had been at least a week, maybe longer.
"Are you ready?" asked the Witch in a quiet contemplation. The long strands of her dark hair, seemingly still healthy and shiny, dabbed the ground like a soft brush as she knelt down beneath the southernmost pillar. The Warlock nodded curtly. The Trials were a myth, though, weren't they? Were they seriously hedging their own souls on something greater than the gods? Well, there's only one way to find out, he thought to himself as mist coalesced around his hand, forming a dagger that seemed to shift in ways that deceived the human eye. Forgive us, old friend. I know you wanted to help, but I never wanted it to be like this.