Black Coach

The Black Coach rolls out of the grave-mists behind a team of nightmare steeds, its cairn-wraith driver silent on the box, its outrider spirits keeping pace like a guard of honour. It is a hearse, an engine, and a promise all at once, for the casket it bears is not empty. Within lies an entity suspended between states of being (neither alive nor dead, neither spirit nor flesh), dreaming its way toward a rebirth the realms will regret.

Every death near the Coach feeds the thing inside, and so the Coach grows stronger as the battle deepens: its reliquary lamps burn a fiercer green, its wheels lift from the earth, its scythed hubs and spectral retinue strike with mounting fury. Veteran generals teach a simple doctrine: destroy the Black Coach in the first hour or spend the last one fleeing it. Among the free peoples its legend runs older and quieter: on nights when unseen wheels are heard on the road, doors are barred, candles are snuffed, and no one asks who the Coach has come for, in case it answers.