"And hoarfrost blooms henceforth," she murmered, her icy breath misting and billowing up into the crisp, clear morning air. She gently slid the cold blade across her flesh—and thus let the cold flow into her veins.

The archaic liturgy had been revealed to her by old books, tomes yellow with age that had to be rescued from frost and dried out with flames fed by black oak. Her search for life, she had beleived, was over. And it was; just not in a way that she particularly envisioned.

No, this story is not misanthropic. And, perhaps, I actually shall finish it.