Queen of Toxic Fire
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 soil.
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.
I looked down at my wrist. The skin was bare, still tender where the bracelet had burned away, the ghost of its heat a reminder of the magic that had saved me when Acherios’s death spell should have ended everything.
Distracted by the memory, I lost my focus and stumbled, my knees slamming into the unforgiving rock.
The pain was sharp, grounding. It was the only thing that felt real.
Chthonos Vima, the Necromancer’s Stronghold, was receding behind me, a fading nightmare against the bruised purple horizon. It had been 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.
My whole life I was nothing to them. I was a ghost in the halls of the Stronghold, a shadow at the edges of their world. For them, I was a mistake, an inconvenient truth, a blight within the Necromancer coven.
Inferior, Acherios had called me. His voice, low and cutting, had echoed in the great hall where he delivered his final judgment. Inferior in birth, inferior in power, inferior in every conceivable way that mattered. His words had been laced with a contempt so profound it felt like a physical blow, stripping away the last remnants of my dignity. He spoke of my weak bloodline, my stagnant necrotic power, and the shame I brought to the coven.
Restrained and on my knees, facing the inevitable, I understood the cold, hard calculus of this world. In the end, all I was worth was the warning that my death would give the others. My final, agonizing moments on display for the entire coven to witness; a brutal, undeniable message to anyone who dared to challenge Acherios’ authority. My life meant nothing, but my spectacular, public execution? That was to be my greatest contribution.
But I possessed one thing they didn’t account for. A secret.
I turned and faced the southeast, staring into a valley heavy with dark shadows. To anyone else in Kathar, that stretch of broken land was merely the forbidden ruins of the Nekropolis Lismona, a place whispered about in hushed tones, a landscape of bad omens, ancient curses, and the bleached bones of a forgotten era. It was a place you avoided, a gaping wound on the landscape that no one dared approach, lest they disturb the malignant peace that settled over it.
But for me, it was something else entirely. Lorcan had whispered the truth to me in the deepest dark of night, years ago. The Nekropolis wasn’t just a graveyard; it hid a prison holding something far older and infinitely more dangerous than mere ghosts. It contained a power that the Aion Alliance had gone to great lengths to seal away and forget.
“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 complex, interwoven rhythm of the energy flows that hid the mausoleum from the naked eye and from all but the most sensitive scrying. The massive structure was shrouded by a centuries old defense: a web of silent frequencies humming with forgotten power. Only those who already knew about it could perceive its existence.
I forced my legs to carry me forward, past the dunes and into the valley of shadow that lay beyond.
Once I entered the valley, the shifting, loose shale gave way to the brutal, uneven edge of cracked cobblestones. The impact sent a fresh, jarring ache straight up my shins. This forgotten road was half buried in a fine, grey-black ash. It didn’t just coat my boots; it clung to the sweat on my skin like a parasite, leaching the ambient heat directly from my legs. It was the soil of a dead city, and with every step, I felt the history of this forbidden place weighing down on my shoulders.I was now within the Nekropolis Lismona.