You stand in the middle of an empty street, the city looming and twisting all about you. Everywhere is iron, black and pitted. Gates, doors, window frames, roof tiles, gargoyles, all blackened, covered in ferric soot. The very cobbles beneath your feet are iron, cracked and dirty. The air is redolent with the stench of burning metal and rendering fat and is sticky-hot. Nowhere are there signs of life, and your footfalls echo through the empty city.

You stare, uneasy, at the architecture. It seems vaguely Elven, but wrong, somehow; twisted. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” asks a rich, honeyed baritone behind you. You turn to face a tall, lean devil with his golden eyes and long horns. His tail flicks placidly from beneath rich, silken robes of pitch. Faces of torment writhe silently, silhouetted in its folds. The figure stalks towards you on cloven feet, a wry smile taking its lips. “For too long have you been ignorant of your true heritage, Dispater Sirlius. Ignorant and absent. But of late you have grown to be not just ignorant but an irritant. You are a thorn in my side, Avatar of the Raven, but I don’t think you have it in you to face what comes. I don’t think you have the heart to face me.”

And as he speaks, the devil reaches into you, and agony ripples through your chest. An immense pressure and tearing, and as he pulls back his hand from your chest you see your own still-beating heart, dripping black between his sinewy fingers. You awake screaming.