Or, rather, the death of a family.

After years of assassinations and thievery, Drest manages to get enough money to hire help to find out what happened to his family. It takes a month of investigation and tracking, but they finally come upon an abandoned bandit camp that holds the answers he had been looking for.

After Drest fled his family cabin in favor of city life, his family entered panic mode and did all they could to search for him. For years they gave all they could to search for him, traveling far- perhaps, too far- in their attempt to find their lost child. Along the way they end up getting involved with the wrong people, and end up as hostages to a group of traveling bandits, enduring all forms of physical and mental torture in the bandit's attempt to bleed them dry (although the family had become poor long ago after beginning their search).

The bandit camp holds little interest, except for a letter written by his mother and addressed to him. In the leather Drest's mother describes in detail what lengths the family went through in their efforts to find him, and also describes what terrible things they experienced in high detail. The letter finishes up with the mother's concerns that they will not survive the night, but the family still loves Drest very much. (Drest's mother never expected him to actually find the letter, but writing it helped her feel better in her last moments.) Drest, being in the company of his hired assistants, simply thanks them for their work and explains that he will feel better now that he at least knows what happened to them. But after he returns to his forest home, he cannot help but break down and weep for the loss of his family; a burden that he feels largely responsible for since they spent their last year of life searching solely for him.