Chapter One
ELIRA
The ash of the Erebos Wastes didn’t just fall, it suffocated. It coated the back of my throat like powdered glass, tasting of sulfur and ancient, rot-filled earth.
I scrambled up the ridge of a jagged black dune, my boots slipping on the loose shale. Every breath was a battle, a ragged gasp that burned my lungs, but I forced myself to move. I couldn’t stop. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant seeing his face again.
Lorcan.
The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow, nearly doubling me over. The flash of purple light as Acherios struck Lorcan down. I watched in horror as his body simply ceased to be, crumbling into a pile of dry bone and dust before he even hit the floor.
They hadn’t just killed him. Acherios and the Elders had unmade him, wiping his existence from the realm with a casual flick of a wrist, and I was forced to watch. I saw the intent in his eyes when he turned to me. I was to be another casualty, a grim message to the coven: no one breaks the rules.
“No,” I gasped, the word lost in the howling wind. I stumbled, my knees slamming into the unforgiving rock.
The pain was sharp, grounding. It was the only thing that felt real.
Behind me, Chthonos Vima was a fading nightmare against the bruised purple horizon. The Necromancer’s Stronghold. My home. My prison. And now, Lorcan’s graveyard. I could feel the phantom pressure of the Coven on my heels, the elite guards, the hunters, the death that was surely coming for me. I was nothing to them. Inferior, Acherios had called me.
But I possessed one thing they didn’t account for. A secret.
I turned my back on the stronghold and faced the east, staring into what looked like empty, desolate wasteland. To anyone else, there was nothing there but swirling dust and darkness.
But Lorcan had whispered the truth to me in the dark, years ago.
“It’s there, Elira,” his voice echoed in my mind, a ghost I couldn’t exorcise. “Hidden beneath layers of Aion illusion. The Mnema Desmos. The Mausoleum of the Bound. It’s where they keep it contained.”
Now, it was my destination.
I knew well the patterns of the shielding, the rhythm of the energy flows that hid the mausoleum from the naked eye.
I forced my legs to carry me forward, past the dunes and into the valley of shadow that lay beyond. The ground here changed, shifting from loose shale to cracked, ancient cobblestones half-buried in the ash.
I had arrived at the Nekropolis Lismona.
It was a place even the Necromancers avoided, an ancient graveyard that predated the Coven itself. Rows of crumbling, blackened headstones jutted from the earth like broken teeth, leaning at impossible angles. The statues of weeping angels were missing wings, their faces eroded by centuries of acid wind.
The silence here was absolute. No wind howled through the crypts. No scavengers skittered over the bones. It was a dead zone, forgotten by the living and the dead alike.
I moved through the maze of tombs, my hand trailing over the rough, cold stone of the markers. I didn’t read the names. I didn’t care who they were. I was looking for the silence behind the silence.
I reached the back of the Necropolis, where the cliffs of the Erebos range rose up like a black wall. There was no path here, only a sheer drop into a canyon of mist.
But I knew the truth.
I forced my eyes to unfocus, pushing past the physical illusion of the empty cliff face, searching for the magical distortion Lorcan had described.
There.
A shimmer in the air. A cold spot where the mist refused to drift. A massive, invisible weight pressing down on the reality of the Wastes.
The Mnema Desmos.
It wasn’t just a tomb; it was a fortress of solitude, hidden from the eyes of the world by layers of Aion-grade warding.
I raised my trembling hands, my fingers hovering over the empty air. I could feel the hum of the barrier, a low vibration that rattled my teeth. It was designed to repel, to confuse. I found the tiny imperfections in the weave of the spell. I dug my magic into them, not tearing, but unraveling.
The air rippled like water. The illusion dissolved.
The cliff face vanished, revealing the truth hidden behind it.
The Mausoleum stood before me. It was colossal, a monolithic structure of black obsidian that seemed to drink the meager light of the twilight sky. It had no windows, no ornamentation, only a single, massive set of double doors sealed with runes that glowed a faint, sickly violet.
I stepped forward, placing my palm against the cold metal of the doors. They swung open silently, balanced on hinges of magic that hadn’t degraded in millennia.
I stepped inside.
The interior of Mnema Desmos was vast, a cavernous hall of polished stone that echoed with the sound of my own breathing. The air was stale, cold, and heavy with the scent of ozone and suspended time.
Rows of pillars marched into the darkness, supporting a ceiling lost in shadow. But the center of the room was empty.
There was no sarcophagus. No statue. No grand monument to a fallen king.
There was only a single, flat marker set flush into the obsidian floor.
It was blank. No name. No dates. No epitaph.
It was a grave for a thing that wasn’t supposed to be remembered.
I ran, stumbling toward it, my footsteps echoing like gunshots in the silence. I reached the center of the room and looked down at the blank stone.
This was it. The end of the line.
The adrenaline that had fueled my escape evaporated, leaving me hollow. The weight of what I had lost crashed down on me.
I sank to my knees beside the marker, the cold of the floor seeping through my torn pants.
Lorcan
The name broke me.
I collapsed forward, my hands pressing against the cold stone of the marker, my forehead resting on the ground. The sobs came then, ragged and ugly, tearing from my chest with a violence that shook my entire body.
“You were the only good thing I had,” I gasped, my voice echoing in the empty hall. “The only one.”
I cried for the boy in the woods. I cried for the man who had protected me. I cried for the future Acherios had stolen.
“I can’t continue here without you. Why? Why did this happen?”
The grief was a physical pain, a drumming against my ribs that drowned out the world. I didn’t care about the Coven. I didn’t care about the Draugr. I just wanted him back.
“They will pay,” I vowed into the stone, my voice shifting from a sob to a blade. “Every last one of them. For taking you from me, they will suffer. I promise you this, I will have their blood.”
I pressed my palms flat against the blank marker, pouring my pain into the rock.
“Lorcan,” I choked out one last time.
Then, I wiped my face. I sat back on my heels, staring at the invisible prison beneath me.
I wanted total destruction.
I didn’t want to survive. I didn’t want to escape. I wanted to unleash something so terrible that it would scour Acherios and the Elders from the face of Kathar, even if it took me with them.
I raised my hands, fingers finding the hidden seams of the containment seal, and began to pull.
THORNE
I was a warrior frozen in mid-swing.
Time did not exist here. There was no day, no night, only the crushing, suffocating weight of the earth pressing against my consciousness. I was buried beneath a seal of Aion-grade magic, a Desmos that pinned my soul between the shattered remnants of my old life and the cold reality of this new, peculiar realm called Kathar.
I was Thorne. I was a Draugr. And I was pure, unrelenting fury.
Kill them. Break them. Feed.
The commands roared in the void where my mind used to be, a constant, deafening static of rage. It was a noise that never ceased, a drumbeat demanding blood. For centuries, or perhaps minutes, it was impossible to tell; that rage had been my only companion.
But I was not just a beast. I was a listener.
My consciousness, stretched thin and taut like a wire through the earth, caught the vibrations of the world above. I knew the footsteps of the man who walked on my grave.
Acherios.
The name was a bitter taste in a mouth I couldn’t open. The Necromancer Lord. I knew his arrogant gait, the heavy, rhythmic thud of his staff against the obsidian floor of my prison. He used this place, this Mnema Desmos, as his private conference room, confident that the cloaking spells hiding the mausoleum kept his secrets safe from the world.
He was a fool.
I heard his whispers. I heard the way he spoke of his followers as cattle, as “breeding stock” and “resources.” I heard him plot the death of a man just to break the spirit of a woman he found “troublesome.”
Evil.
The word floated through the red haze of my fury. This realm was no different from the one I had died to save. Tyrants ruled. The weak suffered. And I… I was trapped in the dark, a sword locked in a stone, vibrating with the need to strike.
Acherios and the Elders were evil, but the followers were inexcusably ignorant and foolish to enable them. They all deserved destruction.
Let me out, the monster snarled, clawing at the magical barrier. Let me end them.
But the seal held. It always held.
A new sound broke the meditative focus of my hatred. It wasn’t the measured pace of the Elders. It was frantic. Stumbling.
*Thump. Scrape. Thump.*
Someone was running. Someone was falling.
Then, a sound I had never heard in this desolate place. A ragged, ugly sob that filtered down through the dirt and stone, vibrating against my very bones.
“You were the only good thing I had. The only one.”
The voice was female. Broken. Drenched in a grief so raw it felt like she was bleeding out onto the earth above me.
“I can’t continue here without you. Why? Why did this happen?”
The Draugr’s demand for annihilation faltered. The red static in my mind hissed and popped, then… quieted.
For the first time in centuries, the roar of the monster receded, replaced by a stunned, confusing silence.
She wasn’t chanting a binding spell. She wasn’t boasting of power. She was weeping.
Someone cares.
The thought was alien, sharp and bright in the darkness. I felt a desperate, unfamiliar urge to reach out, to cradle this broken creature, to absorb her pain. The memory of my own life, spent as a weapon, unloved and unmourned, felt suddenly poignant.
For a moment, in the dark, I let myself believe it.
I let myself believe she was weeping for me.
For the first time, I felt like I was a man who mattered. A man someone loved. A man someone mourned. I was more than just a sword.
“They will pay,” she vowed, her voice shifting from a sob to a blade. “Every last one of them. For taking you from me, they will suffer. I promise you this, I will have their blood.”
The resolve in her voice hooked into something deep within me. It bypassed the Draugr’s mindless rage and spoke directly to the soldier I used to be.
Then, the final, desperate word, choked out between gasps, pierced the confusion.
“Lorcan.”
The name struck me like ice.
She wasn’t weeping for me.
But the furious jealousy that should have followed never came. Instead, the profound yearning intensified. How fortunate was this Lorcan to be so loved? To be so deeply cared for that his death could break a woman in half?
In that moment of utter helplessness, pinned beneath the earth, I realized the one thing I truly craved was not vengeance, but connection.
Then, the magic started.
It was chaotic. Desperate. It tasted of ozone and tears. I felt her power latch onto the hidden flows of the illusion that hid my prison, not picking the lock, but smashing it with a brick.
The chant hit its apex, a shriek of raw necrotic power, and then her voice cut through the cacophony, clear and deadly. “It is done. I have sealed the pact. The contract is unbreakable, bound by blood and the price of their betrayal. For you, Lorcan, I will unleash the end on Acherios and the other Elders of the Necromancer Coven, and the Draugr will have no choice but to see it done.”
The floor above me cracked. The heavy Desmos seal shattered. The sheer, sickening power of the ritual hit me. My consciousness, the scattered shadow, and my physical form were slammed back together in an instant, a blinding flash of agony. The stasis ended.
I erupted from the earth in a violent, black plume of shadow and debris.
Fragments of the obsidian marker turned to shrapnel as I tore my way into the world of the living. I stood on the consecrated stone of the mausoleum, breathing, feeling.
The Draugr’s instinct screamed in my skull: Annihilate them all!
But I saw her.
The woman who had wept so beautifully for a man who wasn’t me, stood before the collapsing wards of the ritual.
She looked small against the backdrop of the massive hall, her hair a shock of vibrant green in the gloom.
The sight of the hulking, monstrous Draugr should have sent her fleeing. It should have broken her mind.
Yet, she stood her ground.
Her amber eyes were wide with terror, but beneath the fear was an iron core of resolve I had not seen in centuries. She did not run. She did not flinch.
“I did it,” she whispered, utterly spent.
She swayed, fighting to stay upright, fighting to deliver the command that had cost her everything. She looked me in the eye and stated my purpose firmly.
“You will kill Acherios and the Elders of the Necromancer Coven by the next full moon or be returned to your grave. Permanently.”
The ultimatum drained the last of her strength. She swayed, and before I could move, her eyes rolled back as she collapsed onto the cold stone floor, unconscious.
The rage, the centuries of hate, fell away. It was a silent, absolute surrender.
I looked down at her desperate, tear-streaked face. My monstrous form loomed over her fragile, sleeping one.
She had summoned a monster to destroy, but in her grief, she had awakened a man.
I made my vow, the low rumble of my voice carrying over the silence of the crypt.
“I will be more than a weapon for you.”