The wasteland that is the Shade of the Revenant is all we know. We occasionally meet a wraith, usually one of Mannimarco's worshippers whose soul he claimed, or one of his old enemies that he trapped. They were mostly just as insane as us, but they were the only company we had until now. Mannimarco's most favoured servants lived in the great infernal tombs in the centre of the planet. Here, the soul of Mannimarco himself, Lord of Liches and Greatest of All Mages, sat on his throne, god-king of this world of wraiths. For a while he had us in his throne room, regarding us as a trophy. Out of boredom, he freed a fragment of our conciousness (for if our full soul was free, I could destroy him) out of our prison and took delight in seeing our horror at this loathsome world. He banished us to the surface, to share the fate of his unworthy cultists and enemies. We attempted to build a home, but he simply made his plane(t)-body quake and destroy our cottage after we spent months working on it. He altered his own form to have foul brackish water and fruit that was painful to eat, and cursed us to hunger like we were mortals. He laughs at our torment. We are but his playthings.

Every so often he offers me respite. If we pledged our allegiance, he would grant us the paradise in the depths of the moon. But we always refuse his offers. We love Tamriel, and we will not side with those who seek to enslave it. It is all a formality. Our soul is his, and he saps all the power he needs from us. Allied or not, he has everything he can gain from us. He simply waits for the day that our wills are so broken that we will praise him, call him our lord and master, and beg for mercy. But we are strong, and we will not give up just yet. We will never bow to him. He is but a foul mage, who discovered the secret of immortality and apotheosis and instead of using that power to help the world merely uses it to sate his own sick desires. He at least had a reasonable goal back when he was mortal, to master the ways of magic. But when he became a god, all the knowledge and power he could want was his. Now he simply wants pleasure, and he finds it most in the torment of his enemies.

He mocks me, telling me that when the great dragon broke that we died in every other possibility. But since we lived in the possibility where he ascended to godhood, the only us that exists is the one that was his plaything. For so long we have begged for death, and the fates have conspired to keep me alive only in the way that was worse than what we were then. He has blocked all dreamsleeve communication, and we couldn't send this message. But the Dragon Break divided his mortal and divine selves. When his mortal self died, his divine self was effected by the backlash. We do not know how his mortal form died, but we know he will recover any moment now. We come to warn all those who read this message of the God of Worms. He must be stopped. Destroy his cults. Find a way to make the divine mortal. If not for my sake, then for Tamriel's. We are Numidium... No, that was what we were... We are Tiber Septim... No, that was a lie... We are Zurin Arctus... No, we are Wulfharth... We cannot know any more. Our mind is too broken by torment to remember. But we know that we are the Underking, and that is what we are certain of.

Tell Hjalti... Tell Talos that his old friend forgives him, and asks for his forgiveness. If he has truly become a god, then I wish to take this last moment to settle our dispute. These are my last words to the Empire.