A young woman with fair skin, dark brown hair, and eyes of amber sits alone on a cot in a sparsely decorated room. Across from her is a full-length mirror, framed in bronze and bearing a few minor cracks along its edges. "Is there a point to this?" she asks inwardly, looking pensively at her own reflection. "You want to do it." is the answer that she gives herself, and that seems to be enough. Filled with sudden resolve, the woman gets up and removes the plain brown robe that served as her only garment. She sets the robe upon the cot and moves to stand within arm's reach of the mirror.

Wasting no time, the woman casts a series of necromantic spells that each change her body in a horrifyingly brutal way. When the last spell has been cast, she stares clinically at her reflection. Her face is now pallid and angular, the bone structure having changed to become more mask-like. Her right eye glows with arcane power, ostentatious in comparison to her left eye with its trifold pupils and ring of delicate cyst-buds. Hard, semi-flexible ridges jut up from beneath the skin of her limbs and torso, almost obscuring the reddish-black glow emanating from her entire nervous system.

In the middle of the woman's self examination an intrusive thought asks her, "What is it that you see?" and a frenetic voice from the recesses of her mind instantly replies, "A monster!" She understands that the voice belongs to the part of her that would have chosen a different life for herself, and does not begrudge it. She answers the question aloud, "I see physiological superiority. A path to Transcendence." and after another moment of contemplation, she adds, "I see demonic temptation."

A soft knocking sound comes from the door, three quick raps of fleshy knuckle against hard wood. "Philosopher Yvela?" a male voice asks. She recognizes it as one of the monks. "Your presence has been requested in the meeting hall." Without looking away from the mirror she says, "I'll be along shortly. Thank you."

Her frustration at being interrupted is mostly offset by her curiosity at who wants to speak with her, so Yvela prepares and casts another spell. As the magic takes hold, a field of sublime corruption washes over her body and seeps into her mind, simultaneously stripping away her physical mutations and muting her unconscious sense of shame. Now merely human again, she dons her robe exits the room.