Gate of Memoirs/The Blasted Heath

The cryptic memories of someone who's met with a terrible, terrible fate.
Portrait 	Dialogue
Music: "Devil's Heart"	Music: "Devil's Heart"
 	
*—A shift in time.
*You come to another memory following the man's near-death experience.
*You were as a specter, remembering pieces of an unfortunate's slow demise.
 	
*What was that white shadow?
*It had a face—a body!
 	
*It couldn't possibly be human—could it?
*Without a corporeal body, you could do nothing to save the poor man from his elusive tormentor.
*Perhaps he'd already accepted his fate, or maybe he had no other place to go.
*After all, the little gravestone at the edge of his property was the only tie he still had.
*The land, you noticed, was the first to suffer.
*The earth produced a vile sort of poison, the sort that turned bark brittle and grass grey.
*The affected livestock had to be put down for its own good, and the meat was useless—tasteless.
*That alien sheen should not be present in any creature's flesh.
Portrait	Dialogue
 	
*The water went foul soon after.
*The underground lake that supplied the well showed no outward changes,
*but the silty bottom showed a dozen or more corpses of unfortunate creatures.
*You try very hard to ignore the scintillating sludge.
Portrait	Dialogue
 	
*Even the light seemed to die, becoming a mere hollow shell of itself.
*Almost as if the sun had gone away permanently, and all that was left to illuminate the land were the strange shards.
*The only atmosphere that hung over the field now was a trepidatious anxiety.
 	
*The white shadow came again by night, but it was no trick of the full-bellied moon above.
*Its petite humanoid form seemed to drift over the wasting land like a phantom,
 	
*its glow slowly receding until the unearthly visage of a young girl was visible.
 	
*The girl...gurgles in some vague approximation of language.
 	
*The man grips his firearm tighter, until the garbled words become more recognizable.
*Something familiar.
 	
*?: H͢e͘ ̶̛͝l̀́͜ l ̀ǫ̧.̴
*?: P̷̴͘a͟p̶a.
 	
*He pulls the trigger.
*The "girl's" porcelain skin shatters, sending a web of cracks from the impact.
*You barely register the clack of the firearm as it slips from the man's grasp.
 	
*There, swooning on the ground from fear, was the rancher, transfixed by the sight.
*A shiver runs down your spine as the creature turns to you, and vaguely, in the back of your head,
 	
*you wonder if you're still dreaming.