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Me and Cynv have read most of the book and I can say that this book was Lady Icyhill's personal diary. She had been writing in this book for many, many years. It is big and heavy. Filled with several hundred pages, almost all of them filled with summary of her day. I must admit that I skipped a good chunk of the early pages. It was a bit boring to read at times. It was mostly the story of her mundane life. Particularly dismal transactions, arguments with her husband or daughter. Comments on the servants and achievements of her family. Just the normal stuff of a diary. I didn’t know if I was going to finish it until I got to the part about her daughter's departure from the family house and the birth of her last son. From that point on, the writing style changed drastically to a much darker style. That was the beginning of the real story.

By her writing, I have found that she knew that her daughter would inevitably take her place in a few years. Something that she fear greatly. Causing her to spend many sleepless nights haunted by what the future held for her once she would have been replaced. After all, her youth was over, her glory was gone. She had to make room for the new generation, but she couldn't. As her daughter gain more and more influence in the business, her mental state got worse and worse until she was unable to manage the family business, she was making too many mistakes and forgetting too many things. Her family, seen those as the result of her old age, decide to prematurely removed her from her position and given the role to her daughter Olg Icy. This action killed her, not physically, but mentally. She could not accept this betrayal, which she considered unjustified…

As month became years and having used all her option in hope to regain her place as the matriarch, she decides to try the most dangerous form of magic. She decides to try her hand with necrotic magic in hope to recover what is lost. In her case, her youth. I would say that this moment in the diary marks the final step into her own madness. Her obsession to regain control was becoming sickening. She tried everything she could to reach her unreachable goal. Any promise, any lead, she tried to follow it. She spent a fortune on her quest for eternal youth. Buying magic items, remedies, potions, elixirs. If it existed, she has bought it. This buying spree created a lot of tension between her and her husband, who was trying his best to keep her happy despite the bad times, but it didn’t seem to work. She was getting more and more desperate and sad and desperate. So it was, for a few years. A chase after a chimera that always ended in disappointment, but to this point that what it was. A hunt with no prey… until one day. When she finally reaches the bottom and now there was only madness and rage...

It all start when a traveler wearing a long black cloak and a wooden mask representing arctic owl knock to her door in the middle of the night. As it was her custom, the lady was alone in the living room. Taking advantage of the night to browse through her necromancy books when she heard the knocking. Of course, at first, she decided not to open the door. “There can only be problem so late at night!” She writes in her book, but the person was persistent and kept knocking on the door for hours, the knocking was becoming stronger and stronger. Resonating in her ear like a drum, which disturbed her in her reading. Unable to concentrate because of that constant knocking, she gave in and finally open the door to this strange, masked person with a displeased face. But it seems to not matter for the masked traveler, who immediately introduced herself as a merchant who has lost is way in the snow and was looking for a warm place to stay for the night. Of course, Lady Icyhill was not interested with the idea of having a peasant sleeping in her manor, so she was about to close the door when the masked traveler said to her that she can give her, in exchange for a warm bed, a powerful magical object that could help her with her problem. Lady Icyhill did note in her book that she didn’t believe the masked traveler was willing to give a powerful magical item just for a warm bed, but as it would cost her nothing, she accepts the proposition and guided her to one of the visitor's room... I think it’s the same room where we found the altar, but it’s hard to say. They don’t have a lot of distinction except that cave, which she didn’t mention at this point, but I’m getting distracted... But the paranoia of the Lady stop her from sleeping that night. Thus, when the first rays of sunlight reach the windows of the living room, the tired but still awake lady went to wake the masked traveler, so she could give her due and leave. But the door was wide open with no one inside. The only trace of the masked traveler was a gold bracer encrusted with a beautiful sapphire resting on the bed. The Lady take it as her payment and got curious about this strange object. Thereafter, Lady Icyhill spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was this object, but to no avail. After day’s of research, the only thing she did find was she was feeling at peace when wearing it. She even wrote that she fall asleep after putting in on and when she woke up from that nap, she was full of energy like she as sleep for an entire week. She quickly understood that this object was indeed enchanted, but didn’t have any mean to identify it. She couldn’t ask the traveler, as she was gone and identifying a magical item can be tricky if you don’t wield magic yourself, so she tried the older trick in the book, trial and error. She said to herself that with time, she could identify the potential of this object and then be young and strong again. But her constant work to understand how this object worked drove her further into isolation. With time and practice, she was able to understand some of the bracelet's capabilities, and it seems that this item can be quite powerful, just like the traveler said. With it, she could change the weather, and it was making her more relaxed and peaceful with her emotion, but that wasn't what the traveler had told her it would do. It was supposed to do more, she wanted it to make her young and powerful after all, therefor she continues her search until she found the subject of soul gem. I don’t know anything about those things, but from what she as write. Those extremely rare gem can be enchanted to absorb soul and be charge by the very essence of it, making any magical propriety stronger. She became confidence that the sapphire on the bracer was a soul gem and that she could charge it with by killing people with it... That why ancient necromancy books are dangerous and most if not all mention of those subject is ban. People will do dumb thing for a drop of hope. And that exactly what she did, a dumb thing.

To charged her stone, she decided to kill servants and visitor with the power of the bracer in the hope of charging it. Depositing the body where she could, most of the time, simply dumping them outside. Letting the wild life eat them... She did write that she dump some of them in the lake near the manor… Thinking I could have fish a skull make me shiver... but let move on…

As she continued on her killer spree, she did write that every time she killed someone, she felt stronger and stronger. Therefor the stone was charging... But I’m wondering if that sensation was really coming from the bracer or if it was coming from her broken mind... But whatever what it was, it makes her more determined to reach her goal, but the time was still passing. The clock was still ticking, and she got scare she will not have enough time, therefore she had to accelerate the processes. That when another of those cursed book come in. She read that you can do ritual casting. I did hear about it, but not in the way she wanted to do it. This kind of casting let a caster focus longer on a spell and therefor enhance it, making it far more powerful, but what she wanted to do is to make her own ritual casting in hope to enhance every soul she would gather, so it would feed the stone more quickly. But that not all, she wanted to maximize the ritual, so she would kill not one but six persons in one ritual... I don’t know why six, I don’t know where she found this number, but in her book, it was supposed to be six persons. No more, no least, and it most have at least two members of her family. Once again, don’t know where she finds that, but I think she was too far gone to really have a reason for it.

However, she had to do the ritual in secret. So she remembered that each visitor's room was supposed to have a private bathroom connected to them. In the end, the idea has not been kept in the construction, but the space for the two bathrooms had already been dug out anyway, so they only close it with a wall. Very few people knew of the existence of those rooms, and even fewer remembered it. So she removed the bricks from the wall of the back room, and set up her temple in it. Once set up, It was time for the trap. One night, she lured everyone into that dreadful place and cause a massive blizzard in that room, causing everyone to froze solid as she was chanting... Something, I can’t say what. Her writing is becoming so erratic that it’s harder to make any sens to what she is writing... Once there were all froze in place, she wasn't over. You see, she was so fare gone that after killing six persons, with her husband and SON, the only felling she had written is that the posture of them didn’t feel right... Most of them were in a more panicked position or in fetal position, which didn’t sit well with her. So, she let them unfroze, she then put them in the position I have found them and did the ritual again so that they would freeze in a more... ritualistic position. For her, the ritual could only work if they were in that position... It’s sad to see someone so delusional about something that it’s cost people their own life...

After that, it's a lot of scribbling and writing that I can't read. She looked angry if I am to believe the missing page, the hole in them and the claw mark in the paper. But toward the end, it became more lucid and readable. So I continue with that. In the last couple of page of the book, she says that she feels her death is near and that she curses this traveler for having given her this cursed object that had only brought death and destruction in her life. Seeing her failure in her plan, she regrets her actions. Alone in her manor, her mediate family dead, the renaming servants having fled the manor a year ago. She had not seen anyone for a very long time, she felt alone and abandoned. Betrayed again, not by her family, but by the life that brought her here. Without any hope, without anyone, she decides it was over. She went to bed without drinking or eating anymore. Waiting for a destiny that she had run away from for so long, but which still caught up with her in the end. She never got her youth after all.

I must admit that this story is a bit sad for everyone, on the one hand. She deserves what happened to her, but ending up like this is not desirable for anyone. Cynv, for her part, doesn't really agree with me. She thinks she's a fool who should have had her wings cut off and been thrown into the Mirrored sea until she froze and disappeared into the Deep water forever. I’m not exaggerating anything, she did say that… Let's just say that we have different opinions on the subject...

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