I laid the damaged Revenant on the black stone slab in my summoning chamber. Its jaw hung loose, half melted, its right arm twisted backward. Whatever had done this was not a simple grave ward or tomb guardian.
No, this was a message. A demonstration.
And I hated being threatened.
"Speak," I commanded.
The Revenant shuddered, its eyes flickering green, then dimming again. Its soul was barely tethered.
"He… waits… below," it croaked. "But not… alone."
"Who?"
"The Warden… of the Deep Vein… guards him. Not… Council. Not… human."
It collapsed, spine snapping like a branch.
Gone.
I exhaled slowly, then turned to my remaining Revenants.
"Prepare the ritual," I said. "We're going down there ourselves."
Gallows Market was dead long before I got there.
It used to be a trade hub for smugglers, black mages, relic thieves. Now it was rubble and ash. But under the ruins, hidden behind false catacombs and illusions, lay the Tomb of Erathion the Forgotten—a king whose name had been removed from every record, whose bloodline had been cursed and erased.
Which made him perfect.
If I could raise him, bind him, learn from him—I'd be unstoppable. Not even Alaric and his Council of dusty skeletons could touch me.
I brought two Revenants with me:
Virella, the jewel-voiced noblewoman, now armored in soulsteel.
Marrowjack, a skeletal plague doctor who once caused a city to collapse under his whispered poxes.
We descended into the tomb at midnight.
The air was cold. Not in a natural way. In a soul-freezing, marrow-dragging kind of way. Like the entire place remembered death too clearly.
The walls were covered in chains, not to keep people out—but to keep something in.
At the third chamber, we found the bones.
Thousands of them. Arranged in patterns, runes, glyphs of pain and silence. A barrier.
I reached out to disrupt the circle—
—and my hand was nearly torn off.
The air split with a scream.
From the bones rose a figure, massive and slow. Robed in tattered black, face hidden behind a gilded mask with no eyes.
"Turn back," it said. "You are not worthy."
"I've already come too far," I replied.
"Then so has your soul."
It raised a chain-staff, glowing with cursed iron. Virella stepped forward, singing a note so high it cracked the stone, her voice infused with death-harmony. Marrowjack released a cloud of black fog that ate through magic like acid.
But the Warden didn't even flinch.
He moved like a statue possessed.
In three strikes:
Virella shattered against the wall, bones spilling like gemstones.
Marrowjack's mask was crushed in the Warden's grip.
And I… I was pinned against the tomb doors.
"I see your hunger," the Warden said. "It burns. But you have no crown. No anchor. No right."
I was bleeding. My vision blurred.
But I still had one card left.
I whispered the summoning of last resort.
The Veinfire Pulse.
It tore open the world for half a second. Screaming echoes from the land of the dead. My own soul bled as I forced it through. The ground cracked. The runes flared white.
And the Warden… staggered.
It was enough.
I threw a necro-seal into the doors and shouted the command.
The tomb split open.
And I saw him.
Erathion the Forgotten lay on a throne of black iron, skeletal hands resting on a sword taller than a man. His crown was twisted, made from a ribcage. His bones were gold.
He opened his eyes. They were red.
Not green.
Not blue.
Something older.
"Another thief," he said. "Or a student?"
I coughed, barely standing. Blood in my mouth. Hands shaking.
"A king needs a kingdom," I rasped. "Let me give you one."
He paused. Then laughed. Not cruelly—knowingly.
"You are the first to reach me in a thousand years," he said. "And yet, you bleed like the rest."
He stood, bones creaking, sword dragging.
"I accept your offer, Cassian Vale. But know this: once I walk beside you, there is no turning back."
I extended my burned hand.
He took it.
The bond seared into my flesh like molten iron. Power surged through me—ancient, regal, terrifying.
The Warden screamed in fury behind us, his chains snapping like whips.
Erathion raised his sword. With one swing, the Warden was unmade.
We returned above ground as dawn broke.
The light didn't feel as bright.
Because now… the world had changed.
I had a king at my side.
And the Council would soon feel his return.