The shores of this river were littered with brittle bones and leafless trees that stood like silent sentinels. Their gnarled branches appeared to claw at the sky, bare of any form of leaves or life. Occasional flickers of ghostly firelight danced around their roots, illuminating strange carvings etched into the bark—cryptic symbols of despair and warnings from ages past human understanding.
"Not creepy at all," Faris commented, casting an eerie glance at one of the trees.
All six of them stood at the shore and stared into the river that endlessly stretched before them — the infamous River of Pain. Souls needed to cross it to reach the other side and find peace or they would forever be lost in the abyss of these waters. It was a vast, still body of water with an inky black surface that seemed to absorb all light.
A faint, acrid mist, covered the murky water surface coiling upward like ghostly tendrils.
