Earlier that night, before he heard Ashe scream, Basch had been in his room, reading a book.  It hadn’t been a very interesting book, but looking back on it, it had been a very convenient thing.

The book, “Royal Families,” was revised every five years and covered all the royal families of Ivalice and the lands that they ruled.  This one had been published just last year, and Basch had read the section on Lord Rasler Heios Nabradia more times than he could remember since the prince’s death.  

In the silence of the night, everything echoed in the palace halls.  He heard the clock keeping the careful rhythm of passing time, the wind rattling the windows, but nothing unusual.

But the more Basch thought about it, the more he believed he might be hearing something unusual.  He concentrated and thought he heard metal scraping stone, quietly, like something trying to go unnoticed.

He stood up and moved to his door and opened it quickly so it wouldn’t creak, and he stuck his head into the hallway to listen.  It grew a bit louder, and Basch pulled a pair of sandals on, deciding to explore.

Every so often, the scraping sounds would stop and Basch would wait until he heard it again.  He followed the sound until it led him to the doors of the tomb, and he frowned.

One door was slightly ajar.

Against his better judgment, he gripped the door and forced it open a bit further, descending the steps into the tomb.

Something reeked.

He crinkled his nose in disgust and pulled one of the magic-burning torches from the wall and carried it down with him, breathing through his mouth to spare his nose from the growing odor.  He was drawn to the prince’s sarcophagus and he had to cover his mouth to keep from screaming or vomiting or both.  

The sarcophagus was open, and it was the Lord’s rotting corpse that was causing the horrible stink.  The stone slab covering was leaning against the side of the open sarcophagus, and Basch leaned to drag it up, but he stopped.

He’d never know what exactly possessed him to lift (with difficulty-Rigor Mortis had set in) Rasler’s foot, but he put it down almost immediately.  There were fresh, unexplainable scrapes on the heels of his boots.

He heaved the marble slab back onto the sarcophagus and slid it, out of breath and red-faced, back into place.

Then, Ashe screamed.  

He rushed up to her, but Vossler was thankfully already there.  Basch couldn’t comfort the princess when he, himself, was so deeply disturbed.

When the princess went back to bed, Basch found himself wandering the halls, not knowing exactly what he was worried about.

Grave robbers?

Nightmares?

Or did the good Lord Rasler visit his wife tonight?

“I do not believe in ghosts,” he reminded himself firmly, but he wasn’t sure if he really believed that.  

He finally returned to his room, content that there were no corpses strolling the halls with him.  He crawled into bed and relaxed onto the pillow for a few moments, until a horrifying thought occurred to him.

When Basch had recovered the sarcophagus, Lord Rasler’s eyes had been wide open.