Lady (Shadow Hearts)

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Lady:

“Kill...er”

Lady's only spoken word in Shadow Hearts: From the New World.

Lady is the main antagonist of Shadow Heats: From the New World. She is a living amalgamation of Malice born of an attempted resurrection using the Émigré Manuscript by Graham Garland and Marlow Brown two skilled but inexperienced black magicians.

History:

Lady's history begins with the death of two siblings. Johnny and Grace Garland were killed in a car accident at a young age which, their deaths left Graham, their father, devastated. Graham was a wealthy well connected man and his plight attracted a man called Marlow Brown to seek him out. Marlow was an opportunist seeking to make a name for himself as a black magician and with his knowledge of the occult he offered to help Graham bring his children back to life. With Graham's fortune and Marlow's occult studies the two began research into dark magics and learned of a book called the Émigré Manuscript. The book had been used numerous times of the course of history always with disastrous results and so it had been hidden away by it's creator the famed philosopher and alchemist, Roger Bacon. But after five years of research Graham and Marlow found it's hiding place and stolen it.

By the time Roger found out the book had been stolen and tracked down the two men the ceremony was already being preformed. Graham had been working on materializing the malice the undead and recently dead and taping into the psychological manifestation of hope to use as fuel for the ritual. Graham's ritual was the only time someone would successfully bring a person back to life with the Émigré Manuscript because unlike past attempts the Malice was brought back with the dead was used to manifest the bodies of the dead rather than using the actual remains or just conjuring them from the desires of the soul then their was the simple matter of calling back the soul to fill the forged vessels. It was however in the second part that Graham failed not due to lack of skill or power but rather just a result of emotionally stunned. The two main elements Hope and Malice needed to be in balance. Malice for the physically body and Hope to attract and seal the soul within it with each of these forces being crystallization of positive and negative traits of the soul. As Graham amassed the forces Grace began to awaken from death's embrace, Graham was so moved by his daughter’s return he stopped reciting the ritual midway through much to the protests of Roger who was being restrained by Marlow. Grace looked across the Graham's lab at her brother Johnny whose Hope was quickly fading due to Graham's delay. In the delicate climax of the ceremony Grace transferred the Hope connecting her to her body to Johnny instead rather than see him die again or worse.

Johnny's life was saved and his soul was anchored to his newly formed body but Grace's soul was completely dislodged, the Malice used overflowed and was compound into Grace's body creating a living embodiment of the primal force of Malice that used Grace's body as an avatar. Graham had no idea what had happened, he saw his “Grace” get up from her apparatus and begin walking passed him. When he attempted to engage her she killed him without so much as a glance in cold blood for the slight inconvenience. Marlow and Roger learned from example and gave her a large birth, Roger just by staying out of her way and Marlow by fleeing in terror. Roger was only beginning to fully understand what the Lady was but he knew full well it was not Grace Garland...