Pale light dawned gently in the furthest reach of the sky. Solid black blades of charred grass crunched lifelessly beneath the shoes of uniformed men and women as they worked to secure what remained of a natural disaster that perhaps only the Shrine could explain.

Shards of shattered hulling wedged into the carved furrows of Lake Resuri, but the rays of sunlight beginning to skip across the now placid lake's surface betrayed the fact that they were only a fragment of the wreckage still finding its way to shore. Where the earth was not crumbling char, evidence of having been scoured by a flame the guards had to assume were Adept related, it was upturned or flooded, and in some cases, both.

"I don't even know where to begin looking for what caused this." A guard scowled, "This stuff isn't normally our purview is it? Seems like Shrine business."

"They're saying they won't be getting involved with it." Another groused, running her hand back through her hair as she looked out across the ruin with a heavy heart. "Usually they're the ones telling <span class="mu-i">us</span> to fuck off, but now when we actually want them to step in they're refusing to budge."

"At least there don't... Appear to be any casualties. Small miracle, that."

"No casualties on shore, anyway." The woman corrected darkly, "No telling if they just got washed out. Or buried."

"Really wish you hadn't said that." The first guard sighed, raising his foot uncomfortably from the upchurned mud. His peer's laughter was cut-short when a sudden shout from one of the other guards made the morbid joke into a prophecy. "Wisp preserve, there really was one buried!"

"Should've kept my damn mouth shut..." The woman grumbled as the two of them jogged to the source of the commotion. An arm had been found sticking out of the ground. At a glance, despite being caked in mud, it seemed feminine. There was already an effort rallying to begin digging the rest of the body out when... The supposed corpse's digits twitched.

It flailed awkwardly for a moment, sinking back into the earth as if embarrassed it had been spotted at all, before grasping a handful of the moistened earth and clenching. A second arm erupted from the earth, sending the surrounding guards back a step before the owner of the limbs finally burst free of her earthen tomb and gasped for air.