Deep into the Southern Weald, there once was a great castle standing atop a great hill, so large some called it a mountain. Castle Mountain, actually. The castle now lie in ruins mostly swallowed by dead vegetation of an ashen white. White, leafless trees, white, lifeless earth. Dead, white and ominous the whole of the mountain. Not a stir of wildlife. A queer and chilling sight to behold. Beneath the ruins, down in the bowels of the great hill itself- buried beneath many levels of cellars and middens, you will find the entrance to an ancient barrow.
In the barrow you will find many statues, rather than corpses. So lifelike it s eems they were all feeling a
catastrophe when they were frozen in stone. If you were a wise adventurer, you'd have stopped before climbing the path up to the castle ruins, when you saw the signs reading
"Arcane Anomaly Restricted Zone: Out of Bounds. DO NOT ENTER.
By order of His Majesty, Casimir I, Rex.
If that didn't stop you, the many Turn Back! Warnings posted all along the way might have worried you.
But perhaps you are a student of Continental Institute of Applied Sorcery, and have been granted a research permit.
Or maybe you are one of the youths from the dingy, greenery-encrusted villages scattered throughout the forest valley. It was an unofficial right of passage for these decidedly verdant young people* to venture into the ruins.
But hardly anyone went so far down into the depths of the small mountain that they came upon the petrified forner inhabitants, gathered around a ruined cistern. The Institute arcanists studied this "anomalous zone" for the unmistakable dread and acerbic scent of dark magic pulsed in the very air.
Centuries ago, in the beginning of the reign of the Twins, the went to war against their own mother, the Queen of Air and Darkness.** Having beaten her rebellious children back into this woodland redoubt, the Demon Queen ascended the great winding road to the Citadel. Trapped, the sorcerous twins performed a terrible ritual of the darkest arts, sacrificing hundreds of their own to power the blighting curse which drained the life force of the mountain. With this surge of necrotic power, brother and sister trapped their mother within the portal torn open within the cistern. Exiling her wicked spirit to Hell.
And may they reign happily ever after.
But, o one can withstand the pulsating darkness permeating the air around this sealed off cistern for long. Hence the "don't go here" signs.
Rumors, of course, were whispered among hidden circles of witches and other remnants of the bloody, brutal faerie cult*** that one day their Queen would return to the mortal world and undo the firmament itself, plunging the world into eternal night.
But, we are no longer superstitious folk, and the only remaining two of our evil faerie overlords are....well, still our overlords then. But who believes in faerie tales?
*(This narrator can confirm the old jokes about the green- tinged pallor of the forest dwellers is true. As if they were denied sunlight and subsisted solely on cabbage).