A worn and dusty cobblestone path leads you around to the side of The Castle. The always looming dark woods somehow quiet in a hush, almost reverence in it's silence. Or perhaps from the fear of waking the dead. A light mist creeps at your feet, snaking it's way round your ankles like a ghostly serpent intent on tripping you in it's damp coils. Through the haze, you see ornate cast iron gates surrounding an old cemetery next to the ruins of what appears to be a once gorgeous little chapel. It's base yawning in a silent scream of it's destruction. The huge gate looms over you as you enter and walk through, it's ancient and rusted designs twist and curl into almost skeletal hands that either urge you on, or shove you out. It's not a place for the faint of heart. The grass has given way to mosses and lichen, briers and brambles. They reach out to snare you in their clutches as you brush by. Large marble statues of many graves haunt the landscape. They mark and watch over where Lords and Ladies, Nobles and various other past inhabitants of The Castle now lay. Most are covered in the dank mustiness of time and age, weathered with neglect and the elements. A few large family Crypts stand. Huge doors close in on neatly lined rows of coffins in the little catacombs. Layers of dust shrouding everything in placid hue of deathly gray. As you near the center of the cemetery, kicking past rotted bunches of flowers, forgotten and strewn bits of mementoes from loved ones long since gone, there lay a dark pond of brackish and still water. No ripples can be seen on it's inky surface, and it seems as if the stepping stones leading to the small island in the middle are almost floating above the surface as if scared to touch the liquid. Looming up from the center of the island is a black onyx tomb. Therein lies horrors that even the darkness trembles from.
The air is still, but yet the icy fingers of death caress your cheek, as if asking,
"Do you dare?"
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