Opening Scene — Today#
Giselle’s frost-blackened fingers trace the guild charter parchment. Five signatures needed. She’s collected three—two drunks in the Boralus tavern, one pitying priest who didn’t ask questions.
Death Knights don’t tire, she reminds herself at hour six of hawking her dream to strangers.
“Shadowlily Guild seeks members! Haven’t heard of us? Perfect—neither have we!”
Her pitch gets darker as copper donations trickle in. The fel-scarred warlock drops two gold, mutters “nice flowers” at her tabard sketch. Doesn’t realize the white lilies are funeral flowers.
The irony tastes like grave dirt: building hope from a corpse’s conviction.
The Spark — Fiction on the Library Steps#
Campaign break, hour nine. Giselle collapses at the Stormwind library steps, unfolds the dog-eared fiction pamphlet someone abandoned.
“…and 2B knelt before the Lunar Tear, the last beautiful thing in a world of rust and ruin. She couldn’t cry. Androids don’t cry. But she stayed there until the moon set, memorizing white petals against scorched earth…”
Her dead heart clenches.
Shadowlilies. Not Lunar Tears, but close enough—rare white flowers she’d seen once in Shadowmoon Valley, Outland. Fragile blossoms growing from fel-corrupted soil, thriving where nothing should survive.
Beautiful things in broken places.
She was supposed to die human. Then die worgen. Now she’s neither—undead thing pretending at purpose, hawking guild charters like selling hope could resurrect her.
But those flowers didn’t pretend. They just were, blooming in defiance of the poison ground.
The Memory — What She Lost#
Gilneas, 15 years ago. Still human.
Giselleese ran the Silverpine orphanage—twelve beds, seven kids, endless mending. Reyneese visited monthly, brought supplies, stayed for tea.
“You’re good at this,” Reyn said, watching Giselle braid a tiefling girl’s hair.
“I’m adequate at keeping them fed.” Giselle tied off the braid. “Good would be giving them futures, not just survival.”
“Survival first. Futures follow.”
The worgen curse came three weeks later. Giselle fought it for two days—locked herself in the root cellar, begged the kids to run, screamed for Reyneese.
Reyn arrived at twilight. Found Giselle half-transformed, weeping, still enough herself to choke out: “End it. Before I hurt them.”
Reyneese hesitated. Just five seconds.
Five seconds too long.
Giselle transformed fully, tore through the cellar door. The kids scattered. She doesn’t remember the hunt but woke human again at dawn, covered in blood that wasn’t hers, Reyneese’s holy magic burning the beast back.
“I couldn’t let you die,” Reyn whispered, crying.
Giselle stared at her shaking hands. “You let me become this instead.”
The kids never came back. The orphanage burned in the Fall of Gilneas. And Giselle learned that mercy has a body count.
The Second Death — Northrend#
Eight years ago. Worgen, captured by the Scourge.
She’d been hunting Forsaken—revenge for Gilneas, something to make the curse useful—when the Death Knights ambushed her patrol.
Ritual magic. Frost chains. Arthas’s whispers promising “purpose” and “clarity.”
She fought. God, she fought. But worgen regeneration just meant dying slower.
Reyneese found her three days into the transformation. Giselle was still aware—trapped in rotting flesh, watching her own corpse animate, feeling the Lich King’s will override her own.
“Giselle, if you can hear me—” Reyn’s voice cracked. “I won’t let you serve him. I won’t.”
The holy fire burned. Not quick execution—purification, trying to save the unsaveable. Giselle’s worgen body thrashed, the Scourge magic screamed, and Reyneese kept casting, kept trying, even as Giselle’s consciousness begged her to just—
—finish it—
But Reyn couldn’t kill fast. Only thoroughly.
When Giselle woke the second time, she was still undead. Still Death Knight. Just free of the Lich King, burning with memories of Reyneese’s tear-streaked face choosing purity over peace.
“I saved you,” Reyn said.
“You made it worse,” Giselle answered.
The Breaking Point — What She Saw#
Post-Northrend. Wandering Outland, no purpose, no pulse, existing.
Shadowmoon Valley at dusk. She’d been tracking demons—easy kills, good for forgetting—when she saw them.
Shadowlilies. Hundreds. White flowers carpeting fel-corrupted earth, blooming in toxic soil that killed everything else.
She knelt. Traced a petal (frost spreading from her touch, killing it instantly—even this she ruins).
But the rest kept blooming. Unbothered. Thriving in poison.
Nearby: a draenei girl, maybe eight, picking flowers for her mother’s grave. Humming. Happy, somehow, in this wasteland.
Giselle watched until the girl left. Sat with the flowers until moonrise. And thought:
What if broken places could still grow beautiful things?
What if the poison soil is exactly where the rarest blooms need to be?
What if I stopped trying to be human again, and just—bloomed anyway?
The Struggle — Building from Corpse-Conviction#
Obstacles she faces:
No credibility. Death Knight starting a “hope shelter”? Guards laugh. Donors suspect scam. “What’s your angle, corpse?”
No funds. Copper donations won’t buy property. She’s been pickpocketing (old Gilneas skills) and selling her own gear. Down to leather armor, rusted sword.
No allies. Living people don’t trust undead charity. Forsaken think she’s naive. Other Death Knights call it “weakness refusing to rot.”
Internal war. The Scourge conditioning whispers: burn it, kill them, you’re a weapon not a gardener. She fights her own impulses hourly.
Reyneese’s shadow. Every “good deed” feels like proving something to the woman who killed her twice. Is this shelter her dream or spite?
The Conviction — Why She Won’t Quit#
Sits at the Stormwind fountain, hour twelve, charter still two signatures short. A drunk paladin staggers past: “Death Knight playing hero? That’s rich.”
Giselle doesn’t flinch. “The Shadowlilies grew in fel corruption. I’m just worse soil.”
He pauses. “…What?”
“Outland. Shadowmoon Valley. White flowers in poisoned earth.” She meets his eyes. “Nothing should survive there. They bloomed anyway. I’m building a place for the girls who bloom in poisoned soil—orphans, cursed, transformed, thrown away. The world said they shouldn’t survive. I’m proving it wrong.”
Silence. Then: “You’re serious.”
“I’m undead. I don’t joke.” She offers the charter. “Five copper or your signature. Both if you’re feeling generous.”
He signs. Drops a gold coin. Walks away shaking his head.
Charter complete.
The Vision — What She’s Building#
Shadowlily Shelter (ten-year plan):
Year 1–2: Small safehouse, Stormwind slums. Five beds. Hot meals. No questions about scars or curses.
Year 3–5: Expansion. Workshop for skills—leatherwork, alchemy, basic magic. “Survival first. Futures follow.” (Reyneese’s words, weaponized for good.)
Year 6–8: Legal advocacy. Fight for transformed citizens’ rights. Worgen deserve housing. Forsaken deserve trials, not execution.
Year 9–10: The Grand Shelter—cathedral-sized, Shadowlily gardens in the courtyard. White flowers in Stormwind’s grimmest district. Proof that beauty blooms in broken places.
Her real goal: So no eight-year-old has to watch their caretaker transform into a monster. So no girl grows up thinking “cursed” means “disposable.”
So the next Giselleese has a place to go before someone mercy-kills her twice.
The Irony She Carries#
Giselle can’t smell the flowers (dead sinuses).
Can’t feel warmth (undead flesh).
Can’t cry (no tears left).
But she’ll build the garden anyway. Plant seeds she’ll never see bloom. Fund futures for girls she’ll never meet.
Because the Shadowlilies taught her: survival isn’t about thriving yourself. It’s about making sure the next fragile thing has better soil.
And if Reyneese ever sees the shelter, sees the orphans safe and whole, and realizes what her “mercy” created?
That’s not revenge.
That’s just showing her what blooming in poison actually looks like.
Closing Scene — Tonight#
Giselle pins the completed charter to Shadowlily’s first “guildhall”—a rented basement, forty silver monthly, moldy but hers.
On the wall: a sketch of white flowers. Beneath it: “For the girls who bloom in poisoned soil.”
She has twelve copper left. Two blankets. One rusted sword.
And a dead woman’s conviction that beautiful things grow in the worst places.
Starting tomorrow: find the first girl who needs saving.
Tonight: she allows herself one thought of those Outland flowers, that humming draenei child, and thinks—
Maybe being twice-slain just means I’m too stubborn to stay dead.
The Shadowlilies didn’t ask permission to bloom.
Neither will she.
Themes: Beauty from trauma, hope from undeath, building futures from grave soil. Giselle as morally gray hero—her methods (pickpocketing, frost magic, spite) aren’t pure, but her conviction is unbreakable.