Chapter One: The Black Scales Awaken
(If philosophy bores you, skip to the next section.)
True reincarnation is not a transaction. No smiling deity offers you a system window, a list of skills, or a reassuring pat on the back. There is only the One Above All—existence itself, eternal and impersonal. For a soul to slip through the vastness of the Omniverse, that entity must allow it. The permission is rare, and it is never kind.
Imagine forcing an entire planet through the eye of a needle. What emerges is not merely smaller; it is denser, refined to an edge no ordinary soul could withstand. That density grants power beyond anything in tales of spiritual pressure or chakra. But it comes at a price: the One Above All releases only souls it no longer requires. In that sense, reincarnation is abandonment. You are set loose because you are expendable.
Humans on Earth are denied innate magic, divinity, or godhood for the same reason. Our creativity is a wildfire. Give us raw mana and we forge weapons that shatter worlds. Give us godhood and we rewrite reality until it collapses. The One Above All understands this. So we are sent powerless, our dangerous imagination confined to safe, mortal limits.
End of philosophy
I received no explanation, no gifts, no audience. One moment I was human; the next I woke in a body that belonged to someone else.
Sand scraped against scales. My tongue—long, forked, sensitive—tasted dust, heat, and the faint copper of old blood. I raised a clawed hand into the brutal light: dark green scales, thick muscle, black talons. A heavy tail shifted behind me, kicking up grit. Lizardman. I knew the form from countless hours poring over D&D manuals, theory-crafting builds, arguing monster lore until my eyes burned.
But knowing and inhabiting are different beasts.
The sky was hammered bronze, the sun a white coin that offered no mercy. Dunes rolled unbroken to every horizon. No swamp, no river, no coastal marsh—only desert. Lizardfolk are creatures of water and shade; prolonged sun is slow poison to cold blood. This body—Zamata Sino's body—was already failing: throat raw, scales dull, vision blurring at the edges.
Memories that were not mine flooded in.
A tribe starving beneath endless drought. Elders drawing lots by moonlight. Zamata's name chosen. A spear thrust disguised as a hunting mishap. The long crawl into the deep desert so the tribe would not have to witness his death. The cold arithmetic: one young warrior sacrificed so the rest might endure another season.
Zamata's resentment burned cold and clean. I welcomed it, let it braid with my own detached fury. Vengeance could wait. Survival demanded attention now.
Something vast uncoiled inside the body—power like smoke trapped in a sealed jar. True death magic, instinct whispered. Not the diluted negative-energy spells of tabletop games, but something older, purer. This body had carried the seed; my denser soul had forced it to bloom.
The sun climbed. Heat shimmered in waves. Far across the dunes, half-buried in sand, rose the broken arch of dark stone. It radiated a faint pressure, like standing beside an open grave. Shelter, at minimum. Answers, perhaps.
I walked.
Each step was fire. Sand slid under claws. Thirst clawed my throat. By the time I reached the ruin, the world had narrowed to the next footfall. The entrance yawned beneath the arch, and the instant I crossed the threshold the temperature plunged. Cool air kissed my scales like absolution.
Mana—thick, heavy, flavored with grave dust and ancient blood—filled the chamber. Hieroglyphs marched across the walls in a script I had never studied, yet meaning flowed into my mind as naturally as breath.
Enter, seeker of silence. The worthy find sustenance; the unworthy find only endings.
At the center stood an altar of polished obsidian. Upon it rested a small statue: a robed figure whose face was smooth void beneath a hood. The plaque beneath read:
Xenorrhath, First Silence, Lord of True Death, the End That Waits.
I felt no compulsion to kneel. Submission was never my strength. But I recognized opportunity when it offered itself without demands.
I claimed the temple as my own.
Time dissolved.
There was only study, practice, refinement.
The shelves sagged under tomes bound in hide, bone, and materials I could not name. Black crystals pulsed with soft light, feeding me ambient mana so that hunger and thirst became distant memories. I learned to draw decay from the very air, to animate bones with flawless obedience, to tear souls free and bind them screaming into gems. Some spells came from the books; others arose unbidden from the fusion of my Earth knowledge and this body's instincts.
I experimented.
First came simple cantrips: chilling a scorpion carcass until frost rimed its chitin, then reversing the flow to restore fleeting warmth. Later, more ambitious rites—knitting severed lizard tails back to wholeness only to rot them again, mastering the precise balance between creation and destruction. Negative and positive energy were not interchangeable; understanding how to inflict a wound did not automatically teach healing. True mastery required learning both directions separately, like a swordsman training left and right hands.
Centuries of mortal scholarship compressed into relentless days—or weeks, or months; the temple had no windows. I slept only when the body demanded, dreaming Zamata's memories of swamp hunts and starlit waters. Upon waking, those dreams belonged to me.
My scales drank the temple's essence. Dark green faded to absolute black, reflecting no light. My eyes shifted to cold violet that glowed faintly in shadow. Power accumulated like dust in a crypt, layer upon invisible layer.
I discovered minor wonders: a font of black liquid that restored stamina but tasted of funerals; a circle of runes that accelerated learning but left echoes of screaming voices in my skull. I used them all.
One cycle—morning or evening, impossible to tell—I found the prophecy sealed in a scroll case of petrified finger-bone. The wax seal depicted a skull wearing a crown of thorns.
When the sands reclaim the buried shrine, One shall emerge cloaked in night, Black of scale, violet of eye, Bearing the aura of True Death. He shall gather souls as a miser gathers coin. He shall seed a plague of unlife across the continent. Through him, Death shall rise anew. And when the world lies silent beneath his tide, He shall cast off flesh entirely And ascend as demilich—eternal, unbound.
I read it five times. Then I laughed, a dry rasp like bones scraping stone.
A blueprint delivered on a silver platter.
I took what I needed:
Two flawless onyx gems, each the size of a child's heart, perfect for soul storage A bag of holding lined with shadow silk, bottomless and weightless Half-plate forged from abyssal bone and black iron, lighter than steel yet stronger A morningstar mace whose head was a leering skull of cold iron, mouth hinged to bite A map inked on preserved humanoid skin, revealing leylines and forgotten necropolises The grimoire of Xenorrhath's innermost circle, pages whispering when turned The prophecy scroll itself, for future reference
When I stepped outside, the desert wind greeted me like an old creditor. Behind me, sand cascaded into the entrance in a silent avalanche. The temple vanished, erased from mortal sight. Only the fated—or those ruthless enough—would ever find it again.
I turned northwest, toward High-Rawl.
The journey lasted weeks, perhaps months.
This world's day stretched twenty-eight hours. I traveled by night and the cool hours before dawn, burying myself shallowly during the searing midday. Minor cantrips kept water pure and cool in my skin. I hunted jackals, giant scorpions, and once a sand drake—draining their essence to replenish mana, storing venom sacs and bones as reagents.
The dunes gradually yielded to cracked earth, then red rock spires. At last the canyon appeared: High-Rawl, a colossal wound hundreds of meters deep and dozens of kilometers long. Mesas of crimson, ochre, and burnt orange rose like the ribs of a dead god. Rope bridges swayed between cliffs. Torchlight flickered in windows carved into stone. The air carried hyena musk, spiced meat, and the constant low growl of gnoll voices.
I walked the main causeway unchallenged. Lizardfolk were rare here but not unknown; mercenaries of every stripe passed through these trade veins. The gate guards—hulking gnolls in patchwork armor—sniffed once, bared yellow fangs in lazy greeting, and waved me on.
I climbed.
The city stratified by altitude and wealth.
Lowest terraces: slave pits, tanning yards, the stench of offal and despair. Screams echoed from fighting pits where captives earned freedom or death.
Middle levels: forges belching smoke, inns offering sour wine and roasted meat, merchants hawking bone jewelry and poisoned blades.
Higher still: polished stone walkways, guarded manors, the subtle tingle of wards in the air. Here the gnolls walked upright with calculated grace, intelligence gleaming in yellow eyes.
Negative energy pulsed above me like a second heartbeat. I followed it without hesitation.
The source was a manor built into the highest cliff face—dark wooden door bound in iron, windows shuttered with bone slats. Black runes crawled across the stone like living veins. I knocked twice.
The door opened on silent hinges.
An old gnoll waited within. He stood barely 1.7 meters, hunched beneath robes of midnight cloth embroidered with silver sigils of entropy. Bone plates armored his chest and shoulders. A mask carved from a hellhound's skull concealed his face; ruby gems glowed in empty sockets. In one spotted paw he clutched a staff of ebony topped by an onyx skull.
He studied me for a long, measuring moment.
"Come in, come in," he rasped, voice like dry leaves scraping stone. "Oh, mighty Cleric."
I stepped past him. Corridors tunneled deep into the cliff, lit by corpse-fat candles that burned with green flame. From deeper within came the clash of combat—steel on chitin, grunts of effort, the wet sound of something large dying.
"You were expecting me," I said. Not a question.
"Yes." The masked head nodded slowly. "Xenorrhath spoke to me long ago through dream and divination. A black-scaled lizardman, eyes of amethyst, cloaked in death's aura. You will end this era of peace."
"Era of peace?" I tasted the phrase, found it bitter.
The gnoll gestured for me to follow. "Five hundred and twelve years since the Last War ended. The gods of light and life brokered an uneasy truce. Necromancy became the ultimate heresy—punishable by immediate annihilation of body and soul. The continent believes the age of undead legions is over forever."
Five hundred and twelve years.
The number settled in my mind like a stone dropped into deep water. Zamata Sino's inherited memories spoke of endless tribal wars, yet those conflicts had ended half a millennium ago. Entire empires had risen, grown soft, and forgotten true fear while I studied in darkness.
We reached a balcony overlooking a sunken arena. Sand floor stained with old blood. Stone tiers for spectators—currently empty save for shadows.
In the pit, a young hobgoblin fought a monstrous scorpion. The creature's carapace gleamed like forged obsidian; its tail dripped venom that hissed where it touched stone. Barbed legs longer than spears scraped grooves in the sand.
The hobgoblin—broad-shouldered, scarred, moving with lethal precision—danced around strikes, blade flashing crimson in torchlight. He was skilled, but fatigue showed in tightening shoulders.
The old gnoll raised his staff. Scattered bones on the arena floor rattled, assembled, and rose: a towering skeleton clad in rusted mail, wielding a jagged longsword. Together, apprentice and undead dismantled the scorpion in brutal efficiency—tail severed, legs crushed, shell torn open in a spray of black ichor and viscera.
The hobgoblin threw back his head and loosed a triumphant howl that echoed through the chamber like a challenge to the gods themselves.
The gnoll clapped slowly. "Well done, Gizmo."
The hobgoblin dropped to one knee, chest heaving.
"Rise," the Master said. "Come meet the one foretold."
The hobgoblin climbed the steps. Up close he was younger than I expected—twenty summers at most. Scars crisscrossed green skin. Eyes burned with raw, naked ambition.
He looked at me—black scales, violet eyes, the deathly aura clinging like grave-mist—and recognition dawned. He dropped to one knee again, this time before me.
I studied both: ancient gnoll necromancer and his driven apprentice. Tools, certainly. Allies, for now.