[After one more step, his hand on the rope encounters another hand - gaunt, skeletal, chilled - and the flash of lightning reveals the figure it belongs to, a seven-foot tall cloaked being, almost impossibly slender, every feature except its pallid forearm concealed in its enveloping black robe.]

Greetings.

[The voice seems to come from somewhere around its chest, rather than from within the hood, and carries over the noise of the storm. There is a windy quality to it, as if it is being shouted from a further distance away.]