"No!"
Shade could not accept this outcome at all. Braving the frigid, bone-piercing Black Wind, amid the repeated whispers and murmurs of countless dead, he approached the two towering gray stone doors. The golden ember marks on his body truly stretched behind him like flames. The power he felt was even greater than that of the gods he had faced in their saintly forms.
"What exactly is death itself?"
Standing before the doors, with his feet upon Priest Augustus's final footprints, he looked up in the darkness at the stone doors in their entirety. Every clue ended here. The priest had already crossed through these doors and gone to another world.
He stood there, contemplating everything. Then he suddenly raised a hand and placed it against the stone door before him. The icy, bone-chilling sensation gave him the illusion of falling into an abyss. There was no need for "her" to tell him; Shade himself could sense what lay beyond the door.
Beyond the door was "the end."
"Should it end here? Should I admit that Priest Augustus hadn't lied, that he really is dead, and then turn around and leave?"
Shade asked himself, then lowered his head to look at the fiery red thread burning around his wrist.
"I've crossed life and death to come this far. Am I really turning back now?"
He looked up again at the enormous stone doors, his eyes fixed upon the "door." Blood continuously seeped from the corners of his eyes. The relic level of these doors that divided death could not possibly be below Sage Level (Level 2).
"Are you willing to accept this?"
Shade asked himself. His soul became cold and stiff with death so close at hand. All Things Must End, and beyond these doors was the end.
So, Outlander,